Hell and High Water
by White Mage Koorii
Summary: They should have been back at Earth, not trapped here on a backwater planet somewhere in the galaxy with a ship that wasn't functioning anymore. [Post ME3, Destroy Ending]
1. Chapter 1

This little work of fanfiction is dedicated to all of my dear friends who have put up with me through its creation.

To Nihlus, for being the reason I fell in love with Mass Effect the way I have-thank you for buying me the first two games and unleashing the monster I am.

To Enky, who checked my grammar and put up with me constantly bugging her about my story and my ideas for it.

To each and every one of you who's listened to me ramble about this piece as I worked on it, not to mention as I played the games and fell willingly into Garrus/Shepard hell, not to mention cheered me on to keep me typing.

Last, but most certainly never least, to Sama who's been there helping me hone my writing skills for several years now-my dear co-writer who knows nothing about Mass Effect but was happy to let me rant and rave to her about it anyway.

And now….on to the story.

* * *

 **Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **1**

* * *

The quiet rush of bubbles filled the silent room and Garrus slowly lifted his chin from where it rested against his hands. There was an ache in his neck and spine that attested to the long hours he'd sat there, unmoving. A gargoyle in the dim blue glow of the fishtanks. His eyes tracked the shadow of the fish across the floor, liquid and drifting.

Slowly, idly, he allowed his fingers to unfurl, stretching them until he felt the pull of the tendon between thumb and forefinger at their full extent. Garrus uncurled, stood in slow movements, and then strode forward. As he headed for the door, he struck the side of his fist against the button near the tanks, unleashing a cloud of food into the waiting, hungry mouths in the water.

He prowled the ship, eerie in its silence. The steps of the skeleton crew seemed muffled beneath the echoing quiet. Eventually his wandering took him to the mess, and from there back to the CIC, two bottles clutched in one hand. Without the galaxy map, or the holographic model of the _Normandy_ the CIC seemed as empty as the vacuum of space.

Joker sat at the controls, and Garrus dangled one of the bottles down over his shoulder. Without a word, Joker took it and settled back in his seat. Just as quietly, Garrus stepped over the slight wall and curled himself into EDI's empty place.

"Thanks," Joker said, then gave a quiet sound and settled lower in the pilot's seat. The silence consumed them as they downed their drinks. The _Normandy_ purred on, eerily quiet without her sentience and without her Commander.

An unfamiliar sky gleamed with stars and three moons outside of the _Normandy_ , framed by the tops of massive trees. Garrus studied it for a moment. Finally, he broke the quiet. "Any news?" he asked, voice subdued. If anyone on the ship could grasp exactly how Garrus felt in that moment...it was Joker.

"From the outside?" Joker said in a rush, and Garrus could tell just from that what his answer was. Joker always used that tone when he was trying to get the bad news out of the way. "Nothing. Zilch. Zippo. As far as I can tell either the _Normandy's_ long range comms are fried, or all the comm buoys between us and there _are_. Internal though? Traynor got the short range communications up and running, and internal is working like a dream. Life support didn't suffer any damage, and we're almost done analyzing the atmosphere out there soooo…."

The fact that Joker made no move to comment on the state of the ship's AI wasn't something Garrus was going to point out. If he hadn't given up on Shepard, then he doubted that Joker had given up on EDI.

Joker drummed his fingers against his bottle, shifting in the dim orange glow of the _Normandy's_ controls. He could have been anywhere else in the ship right now, but here he was...just like Garrus had spent the last several hours tucked away in the Captain's Cabin.

"Adam's came up to report on the state of the drive core," Joker said finally. "He says it's going to take a while...that they're not even sure what the trouble _is_. He didn't find it funny when I suggested _everything_ either."

Lifting his bottle, Garrus gestured toward the world outside of the ship's windows. "Any idea if we have hostiles out there?"

"Yeah," Joker drawled, " _about that_. See, the proximity scanners were...y'know, tied to the AI."

Garrus grimaced, fingers clenching tight on his own bottle. "Right," he said. "Once we know what the atmosphere is like I'll take a squad out to scout a perimeter and set up short range sensors."

"Sounds good."

Garrus glanced over. Joker looked and sounded more subdued than he'd ever seen him before. Except, maybe, that time at the memorial to Shepard when she'd died the first time. A terrible ache clenched in his chest, and it took everything he had to fight down the want to tear the whole damned galaxy apart. He'd told her, hadn't he? He'd kill anyone—anything—that dared hurt her again.

The cold, hard fact of it was that he couldn't. He was here, trapped with the rest of the _Normandy's_ crew. They were all entirely ineffectual, and no power in this realm or the next would give him the ability to be back there, ripping apart the Reapers that were in Shepard's way.

Instead, he'd been taken out by a Mako of all things, and he'd had to leave her to face the end alone. Somewhere, she could very well be _dead_ or _dying_ and he—

Garrus cut that line of thought off immediately and stood. "I'll go do another sweep of the interior," he said gruffly, bronchial in his hurt. Joker didn't say a word as he left, and for that Garrus was grateful.

Neither of them had it in them to deal with their pain mirrored back at them. Not right now.

His drifting steps took him back to the elevator, and back to the Crew deck. From there, he hesitated. Either he could return to the battery, or… Garrus swung his head to the side and set off for the Port Observation deck. His gait was growing more staggered and unsure than he was used to, which meant the painkillers that Chakwas had doped him up on earlier were wearing off.

When he limped in, Tali was already hunched over the bar. Like a jumbled, multi-colored city, an array of bottles stood around her along with forsaken straws and a few discarded glasses. She didn't look up as he made his way over to her. When he grabbed one of her many bottles her head jerked, and she swayed on her stool. "Oh. Hey, Garrus."

"How much have you had to drink?" he asked dryly, well aware that the amount was _more than enough to be completely drunk_.

" _Some_ ," Tali said, forming each word with careful, drunk precision. "And then some more, maybe." She choked on a titter that was more than a bit hysterical. She turned, leveling a look at him through the filmy covering of her mask, eyes gleaming in narrow slits behind it. "Are you going to tell me to stop?"

Garrus set his own bottle down on the bartop with a clatter, and let himself fold into the stool next to her. He stretched his aching leg out and rubbed at his hip absently through his armor. "Not if you're going to let me help you work through all the dextro alcohol we've got left."

" _Deal_ ," she warbled as if it were some great victory, and maybe it _was_. They could use every little victory they could get. She flapped one hand at him and the bottles in invitation. Three fingers, he noted, so normal and yet—

This, he felt, was a special type of hell. Reaching out, he picked up one of the glasses, eyed it speculatively then used it to mix himself some hard-hitting, vile concoction. Garrus raised his glass in a toast, uncertain which end of their era he was toasting to. Either they'd spend the rest of their short lives wondering before the Reapers slaughtered them, or there was a war that had been won without them knowing.

Without them at all.

In the end, Shepard wasn't here to raise a glass with them, and wasn't that just the biggest punch in the gut of them all?

"To Rannoch," Tali said, surprisingly sober and quiet. He wasn't surprised that she was feeling the same thing about this moment that he was.

"To Palaven," he offered, "and Earth."

"And Thessia. To the whole _galaxy_."

And Garrus, well...he could definitely drink to that, even if in his mind he thought: _To hell with the Galaxy. To the only person who gave everything for it. To Shepard._

He hated that a part of him was already thinking of her like she was dead. Garrus drowned his cynicism in his glass, swallowing it back until he felt like he was going to burn up from the inside out.

More than a few drinks later, Tali was swaying on her stool and he was sure she was dangerously close to slipping off at any moment. She didn't though, just kept determinedly matching him drink to drink—he would knock one back and she'd slurp at her straw. Garrus had long ago lost track of their meandering conversation after it had delved into bittersweet reminiscence of exploits past. They could spend forever talking about the old _SSV Normandy_ and the good ol' days, like weary veterans on Palaven.

The only thing that really told him how much he'd imbibed was the fact that the pain in his leg and side had gone numb just like he'd hoped.

"How're things in the AI core?" he asked out of the blue, his vocals twanging drunkenly.

Tali's lone response came out as a rude noise that made her drink froth and bubble, so he let it drop. He could only imagine. He'd been in the medbay when the ship went down, and he'd been able to smell the stink of fried electronics as he hobbled out and headed for the elevator.

Hours later, Tali lay curled up and sound asleep on one of the sofas. Garrus leaned against the observation window, his arm braced against it over his head, and watched as the system's sun slowly crested the trees. One of the planets three moons was still a visible sliver to the left of the rising sun.

Behind him, the door shushed open. Turning his head, Garrus focused on the Liara's reflection in the glass before peering back at her. She came to a stop near his side and stared out through the window. "The results from the atmospheric scans are in," she offered in her quiet, lilting voice. "It's breathable to all species. Nothing worse than a higher than average amount of oxygen." Garrus tilted his head and her, and she shrugged philosophically. "Joker said you'd been asking. Kaidan and James are in the Shuttle Bay."

With a faint huff of acknowledgement, Garrus pushed away from the window. His entire body protested the motion, nausea roiling and his head throbbing—scratch that, his entire _body_ felt like it was throbbing. "Let them know I'm on my way."

Liara inclined her head, then turned to leave. She stopped before she'd even taken a step and looked back at him. "Garrus," she said, and he tensed. Liara let out a breath, and moved to continue on her way. "If you need me, you know where to find me."

The tension slowly drained out of him once the door was shut. He should have known that Liara wasn't going to ask if he was _alright_. Garrus had come to hate that question lately. Sighing out through his nose, he straightened painfully and bumped his fist against the button to close the shutters. At least Tali would be able to wake up without the sun searing into her eyes through her mask.

First things first: Showers, Chakwas, then get his guns.

* * *

When Garrus finally limped off the elevator Kaidan was sitting on an innocuous crate in the CIC, Joker hunched beside him. The conversation they were having cut off at his approach. "Where's Vega?" he asked, coming to a halt before the pair.

"Right behind ya, Scars," James said, and Garrus looked back to see him step off the elevator with a beacon slung over one broad shoulder. "You sure you can keep up with us?"

Garrus snorted. "I got lucky," he drawled, "that tank just popped my hip out of place. Chakwas shoved it back in and told me I'm still pretty."

James smirked at him, looking him up and down. "I think you should confront her for lying her pants off, man."

With a scoff, Garrus tossed his head back. "Don't worry, I can still run laps around you even if I'm bruised from talon to fringe."

He'd been lucky. Not everyone could survive having a tank thrown at them with little more than a full body bruise and a dislocated hip. But then, not everyone survived taking an anti-aircraft rocket to the face either. Garrus had done both. It was a shame he felt like that's where his luck ran out lately.

"C'mon you two," Kaidan said, pushing himself up off the crate. "Let's get this done. We'll all feel better for it."

Garrus had to admit that Kaidan had stepped up. He was a calm voice of reason and authority, and they all knew he knew what he was doing. That didn't stop Garrus from feeling unnecessarily bitter about it. It felt too much like Kaidan was attempting to step into Shepard's place, fill her shoes, and hide the Shepard shaped hole that they were all feeling. It was necessary, but Garrus didn't have to _like_ it.

"Garrus, take point. James and I will follow up with the equipment."

"On it," Garrus said, pulling his assault rifle off his back with a shrug. He wasn't sure if he ought to feel insulted or not. There was every possibility that Kaidan didn't think he was up for the heavy lifting...or he just wanted him up front since he was a damned good shot. That was another thing: He never had to second guess when it came from Shepard. He knew her too well.

While James and Kaidan each grabbed one of the side handles on the crate and hefted it up between them, Garrus strode down the hall toward the airlock and the pilot's seat. There was no way they were getting the hanger open with the way the Normandy had landed, a problem they'd have to solve later.

Joker hobbled alongside him, keeping pace for all his deficient bones and careful steps. "From what the scanners picked up, it looks like we're halfway up a ridge, or down it, depending on how you look at it."

"What are our chances of going the rest of the way down?" Garrus asked, not certain he wanted to know.

With a shrug, Joker preceded him into the airlock, James and Kaidan thumping in behind them. They stood still as the _Normandy's_ systems synced the recycled oxygen with the higher O2 count outside. The hatch opened with a hiss, and Garrus stepped, blinking hard, out into the bright sunlight. A rush of sound hit him; wind in the leafy canopies, animal calls, the crackle and tumble of loose rock. At his side, Joker straightened up and squinted along the ridge they landed on.

"To answer your question," he said in his light, quick voice, "it looks like we're wedged in good and tight. _That_...is not going to buff out."

Garrus turned to follow the line of Joker's sight and snorted. The nose of the _Normandy_ was jammed hard against jagged cut of rock and downed trees. Likely, he knew, from their very crash landing. The slope further downward didn't look too bad outside of the line of trees—nothing that Shepard hadn't driven them off of in the Mako at least.

Behind them, James gave a low whistle. "At least we've got a place with a view, yeah?"

"Leave the beacon here," Kaidan said, all business. "After we set up the perimeter sensors we'll swing back, see about hiking further up the ridge to set it up."

Garrus turned to look up along the line of the ridge. Where there weren't trees with thick, ropey vines, there was bare, cracked rock face. It wouldn't be an easy climb, and he wasn't one-hundred percent certain he'd be up for it later. "Joker," he said, "get your ass back on the ship."

" _Yeah_ , because I was planning on staying out here and enjoying the sun." With a scoff, Joker turned and limped back into the open hatch.

None of them made a move to leave until the airlock had shut securely and the sound of the ship's decontamination sequence faded.

"Alright," Kaidan said, "let's go."

Inclining his head, Garrus stepped forward, leading the way into the thick undergrowth around the massive tree trunks. They truly were huge—some of them bigger around than the three of them could reach standing fingertips to fingertips, even with his longer-than-human arms. The vines were just as large, heavy and coiled along the branches and dripping in leaves the smallest of which were the length of Garrus' forefinger's tip to the base of his palm. At least, if they needed to further secure the _Normandy's_ position, they could make use of the local flora.

He walked slowly, assault rifle up and the butt of it tucked against his shoulder. His visor picked up on the occasional low-range heat signature, and he'd turn to track it only for it to flicker and vanish in between the heavy growth. The sunlight was barely able to permeate the canopy high above them, leaving the world cast in thick shadows and green light. It was humid, too, not at all the dry heat of Palaven. Everything stank of rotting plant matter and a too-sweet, honey scent that reminded him of decay.

The further they pressed on, the quieter the wild-life grew, and the more on edge Garrus became. Just who, and what, could they be alerting to their presence?

Garrus' visor pinged quietly to him, a warning that they were nearing the edge of the _Normandy's_ current short-range communications. "Here," he said, voice low and quiet. He scuffed a marker in the detritus and stepped aside to let the two human's work. Slowly, Garrus turned, sweeping his gun over the nearby tangle of undergrowth. For several long seconds, nothing moved except the rustle of the two behind him.

A glance back showed James and Kaidan had deposited the crate. Kaidan undid the latches, snapping the top open, and pulled out one of the thin sensors. Another snap sounded as he broke the seal of the self-contained battery, and then he was handing it up to James. James, in turn, jammed it firmly into the ground that Garrus had scuffed, and twisted a switch near the middle of the sensor's post, setting loose the anchors into the dirt around it.

" _Number one is online and transmitting,_ " Joker called over the short-range channel. " _Good work, guys._ "

Just as efficiently, Kaidan had the crate shut and gestured down the slope. With a nod, Garrus set out, fiddling with his visor to lay out a grid path for them. Every twenty feet they'd stop, set up one of the proximity sensors, then continue on, slowly looping around the _Normandy_ 's landing site. The lower on the ridge they went, the thicker the tangle of growth became. Massive flowers—the source of the honey and decay scent—bowed overheard. From between them, a pair of beetles the size of Garrus' head lifted off and buzzed lazily up toward the canopy.

"Man," James hissed. "If that's the size of the bugs around here, I don't want to see the spiders. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it."

Garrus snorted quietly, taking a few more steps before marking the spot for the next sensor. An angry, reptilian hiss had the three of them freezing for a split second, before he whipped around. The only trace of the culprit was a long, whip thin, mottled green and gray tail disappearing around the thick trunk of a tree.

"We're definitely not alone out here," Garrus murmured, and James huffed out a quiet laugh.

"You think it's a relative of yours?"

Sending him a sidelong look, Garrus jerked his assault rifle at the ground. "Just put up the sensor, Vega, and we can go find some of your fellow pyjaks to hang out with later."

James held his hands up in surrender, and turned to grab the sensor from Kaidan who'd plastered on his best patient smile. Garrus turned away to squint into the deep green shadows the creature had vanished into. Nothing moved. There were no sounds. Just the distant call of some other creature, and the stirring of leaves high above them.

"Next one," Kaidan said, prompting Garrus from his listening. Garrus sent one last look into the trees, then nodded and carried on.

By the time they'd circled the _Normandy_ 's crash site and set the perimeter up, Garrus knew he wouldn't be able to make the hike up the ridge. He was limping badly as they made their way back to the ship, though neither Kaidan nor James commented on it. Garrus was many things, but completely, needlessly stupid wasn't one of them.

"I'll go check with Joker, make sure the proximity sensors are all working," he said, jerking his head at the airlock. He waggled his fingers at the pair to hand over the empty crate. "You two go and set up the distress beacon."

James slapped Garrus on the shoulder. "Good call, man. We wouldn't want anything nasty sneaking in while we're trying to get this thing set up."

"It shouldn't take us long," Kaidan said, nodding. He looked up, squinting at the sky. "Let's just hope there's someone close enough to hear us."

Garrus looked up as well. "If not now...then they will be once the fleets start to leave the Sol System." _If they leave Sol_ , no one said. Leaning over, Garrus hooked his fingers into the handles of the crate and hefted it up. James grunted as he lifted the beacon up onto his shoulder. Garrus stood, watching the two humans as they hiked up the ridgeline for several minutes.

They should have been back at Earth. He knew that's what they were all thinking, what they all wanted. Each and every one of them _hated_ that they weren't there. Garrus closed his eyes, remembering the searing brightness of the Reaper's attacks, the back of Shepard's head and shoulders as she whirled away and ran toward the beam.

...And he'd had to let her go, because he could barely stand. It was only thanks to Liara that he'd been upright then, reaching out for her.

He was angry that she'd gone without them, angry at Shepard for being who she was and giving everything she had right down to the end...but, at the same time, Garrus knew he wouldn't want her any other way.

Hefting the crate higher, he stepped into the airlock and listened to the decontamination system run. Once inside the ship proper, he dropped the empty crate near the hatch and limped up behind Joker's seat. "How's the perimeter working?"

"Good, good. Haven't picked up anything yet, except some of the _giant_ fauna out there. Luckily, they don't seem interested in coming too close."

If they were lucky, the planet's native life would be too spooked to give them trouble. Garrus wasn't really the type to bank on luck, so he'd make sure his guns were all in good working order instead. For now, he stood there watching as Joker ran through a series of relays and checks. He was, Garrus knew, attempting to pick up on outside communications again—boosting the signal off the perimeter sensors by pinging it back and forth. It looked like he was having very little success.

Clasping his arms behind his back, Garrus shifted his weight off his bad leg. He stood, listening to Joker's idle chatter and jokes as the man worked. Garrus never responded, well aware that it wasn't _him_ that they were really directed at, but a presence that wasn't there anymore.

It was a good twenty to thirty minutes later that an alert popped up, and Joker reached for it immediately. "That's the distress beacon," Joker said. "Just came online." With a flick of his hand, Joker brought the transmission online.

 _"This is Major Kaidan Alenko of the_ SSV Normandy _. We've crash landed a—"_

* * *

Garrus turned and limped toward the back of the CIC. He had no idea why a part of him had hoped he would hear _Shepard_ over that transmission, when he knew full well she wasn't there. Fool's hope. Lover's hope.

Late into the night, once everyone had retired to their bunks with the taste of hope in their mouths, Garrus made his way to the elevator. It bore him upward to the Captain's Cabin where he input Shepard's passcode. The room was just as dull, and horrifically empty as it had been last night and the one before that. He forced his shoulders to relax as he stepped into the cool, blue glow of the fishtanks.

He glanced over her desk, still half expecting to see her sitting there, pouring over her personal terminal. Some of her things were disarrayed from the crash, and before he could stop himself, Garrus went about setting it to rights. He tucked a datapad into a drawer, and set the medal of honor she'd gotten back upright. Her old helmet he replaced on the shelf near the hamster cage. He snorted, unable to contain his amusement. She'd been...so insulted when her clone had tried to toss out her pets.

Leave it to Shepard to be upset about _that_ and the way she _phrased things_ and not that they were trapped in an air-tight vault, or that her evil clone was making off with her ship. Lightly, Garrus tapped on the glass and watched the rodent trundle out. It sat back on it's hind legs and ran tiny paws over it's round, fuzzy face. With a matter-of-fact 'squeak' the hamster ambled over to it's half empty food dish.

Turning away, Garrus paused as a frame on the floor caught his attention. It was halfway under the corner of her desk. He crouched down and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. He was momentarily blindsided by the image. It was him, and what looked like the Citadel's sky. She had to have taken it on the sly with her omni-tool that day, at the top of the Presidium.

It hit him then, harder than it had before, that she may well be _gone_. Garrus set the photo down on her desk and turned away. He made it to her bed—cold and empty—and sat down on the edge. The sheer _loss_ yawned open in him. This was worse than when she'd died over Alchera, and he hadn't been that close to her.

Back then she had been someone he respected and admired. He had looked up to her as something to aspire to, and her death—for someone that had almost seemed _immortal_ —had torn him down. No one and nothing had changed, and if Shepard couldn't change the world, then what hope did _he_ have?

And then those six months while she was under house arrest on Earth and he was building a support base on Palaven… At least he'd known that was temporary, even if it had been a mire of _how did he really feel about her, what did she feel_?

This though? This...had no guarantee, no real hope. This time, Shepard may well have been dead for good because even her luck couldn't bring her back from death twice. Could it?

Garrus ran his hands over his face and yanked his visor off a little more violently than was absolutely necessary. He tossed it aside, to land on the empty side of the bed. Her side. Her bed. No matter how much time he'd started spending up here with her.

"Damn it, Shepard," he muttered into the quiet room. The anger went out of him just as fast as it had come. Garrus slumped, exhausted, and made up his mind. He popped the seals on his armor, removing each piece mechanically until he was down to his undersuit, then shifted up the bed. Snatching both pillows, he piled them up against the headboard and leaned back against them. Reclining there, Garrus tilted his head back and stared out the skylight at the unfamiliar night sky beyond.

Slowly, he felt himself drift off into an exhausted sleep.

He was woken suddenly, by the sound of the ship's alarms going off. Garrus threw himself off the bed and snatched for his effects. He scooped his visor up and settled it into place before he began sealing the latches of his armor. "Joker," he said, "what's going on?"

Joker's voice came through his ear, sounding as harassed as he felt. _"We've got a breach down in the Shuttle Bay. Whatever it is, they managed to take out two of the proximity sensors before we got a full ID on them."_

"At least they decided to break in next to where we keep the guns."

 _"That's the bright side, yeah. Kaidan's already down there with James and Cortez."_

"Patch me through to them."

 _"On it. I'm running scans to see if we have any other breaches."_

Garrus strode across the cabin, snapping the last pieces of his armor in place. When he stepped into the elevator, Kaidan spoke up in his ear. _"Hey Garrus. I hear you're coming to join the party?"_

"You know it," he drawled. "Do me a favor and have my guns waiting for me, would you?"

A spray of bullets punctuated the background—assault rifle, probably James—as Kaidan yelled, _"Cortez, grab Garrus' guns would you?"_

Garrus crouched down as the elevator began to slow to a stop. As soon as the door opened, he darted forward to crouch behind the weapon benches alongside Cortez. Almost immediately, his guns were pressed into his waiting hands. Garrus swung the sniper into place on his back and checked the assault rifle to make sure it was fully loaded—it was, of course.

Craning his head, Garrus did a quick sweep of the hangar. Kaidan was behind the weapons bench across from him and Cortez, with the mech-dog crouched and trembling at his side. James was further into the hangar, back plastered to a large crate. "So," Garrus said, "what do we have?"

"Would you believe me if I said Rachni," Kaidan asked, his voice breathy and just a bit _too_ cheerful.

"Of course we do," Garrus muttered back. "What else would it be?" As if to affirm, one of the nasty, skittering bugs came crawling over a crate toward the back and lobbed a gooey mass of green poison and acid at James. "What are Rachni doing here? Have the Reapers—"

"I don't know. I haven't gotten a close enough look," Kaidan answered tersely, leaning around the weapon's bench to lift the Rachni and pin it against the back wall where James riddled it with holes.

Garrus swung his assault rifle onto his back and unfolded his sniper rifle. Reaching up, he tapped the side of his visor. "Tali, Liara? Where are you two?"

 _"Javik and I are holding a few off in Engineering,"_ Tali responded lightly, underscored by the powerful crack of a shotgun and a whirring drone. _"They're coming out of a grate down in the hold."_

 _"We can hold them,"_ Javik broke in, cold and detached as ever. _"They will not make it up these stairs."_

 _"There are none on the Crew deck,"_ came Liara's calm response. _"I'm keeping an ear out."_

Garrus propped his rifle over the weapons bench and sighted down the scope as another pair of Rachni crawled out from behind the crates. Inhale...exhale… He squeezed the trigger, a feeling of cool satisfaction flowing through him when one insectoid head exploded like an overripe melon.

"Garrus," Kaidan called, waving a hand at him. "You and Cortez can cover us while James and I push for their point of entry."

"On it," Garrus said firmly, and in the next second Kaidan was diving out of cover and storming up the center of the hangar. As he went, he gunned down the small swarm of tiny Rachni rushing them. Garrus took another shot, blowing the leg off one up on the crates, then dove across the open space between the weapon benches to take the place Kaidan had vacated.

He set his sniper rifle back in place and pulled the trigger almost before he'd sighted. Another Rachni went down, sliding off one of the shuttles. It twitched and screeched until James filled it with holes. A closer rattle of assault rifle fire took out a second Rachni about to pounce from the crates, and James lifted his hand with a hoot. "Nice shooting, Esteban!"

Across from Garrus, Cortez snorted. "I did learn how to shoot you know!"

"I know. Just take the compliment."

Garrus lined up another shot, smiling. It was moments like this that he could _almost_ forget that they were trapped in a downed ship on some backwater planet, somewhere in the galaxy. His next shot was knocked askew when the bulk of the mech beside him banged against his knee. He hissed, the jostling sending a jolt of pain right into his hip. Garrus glanced down and aside at the thing which, somehow, managed to look up at him pathetically. He sighed, and reached down to pat it on it's back. "Out of all the programs on this ship," he muttered, "how it is that you're the only one still functional…" The dog just leaned into his hand and then his side.

Turning back to his scope, he tracked Kaidan and James, occasionally picking off anything that popped up ahead of them. It wasn't a long run to the hangar doors, and they reached it shortly. James let out a low whistle.

" _That's_ not gonna be easy to fix." He leaned forward, and fired a burst around the crates, then nodded at Kaidan.

Kaidan ducked around the crates, then stopped. Holding up his hand, he motioned the rest of them forward. Garrus stood and strode down the length of the hangar, Cortez at his side, and the mech meekly following them. "They melted right through the hangar doors," Kaidan said grimly at their approach.

Garrus let a thoughtful hum rumble through his throat and crouched down next to one of the corpses. He tucked his sniper rifle in between his cowl and his neck as he stared at it. "I amend my question," he said slowly, reaching out a hand and letting his omni-tool flare to life. "What are _regular_ Rachni doing here?"

Next to him, Kaidan dropped into a crouch as well, then grimaced, blew out a breath, and rocked back on his heels. "Your guess is as good as mine. You guys know more about what Cerberus gets up to then I do."

It was meant harmlessly, Garrus knew that, but given the past...Well, he'd reign in his want to kick Kaidan in the shin until later. Maybe he'd ask him for a sparring match. To, you know, perfect his work against biotics.

"When we let them hang around," Garrus said, drawing out the words 'hang around' pointedly, "there was no working on crazy Rachni experiments."

"I know," Kaidan said, and he sounded a little guilty. Garrus knew that he and Shepard had worked the whole thing out, and that was that. It wasn't like it was the rest of them that Kaidan had accused of being a traitor. So long as Shepard was good with him, the rest of them were. That didn't mean Garrus couldn't needle him a little sometimes. They all needed a little needling now and again. "I just meant—"

"It's _fine_." Garrus held up one hand, stopping him from continuing. "No, really. I mean it. I was just pulling your leg." He smirked over at him, making the expression as plain and easily readable for a human as possible. The poor things just...struggled so hard to understand the intricacies of other races' body language sometimes. Shepard was a jewel among them on that front, and even she still had her problems.

Kaidan huffed out a laugh. "Right...right. Anyway…" He trailed off and stared pensively down at the Rachni before them, his hands tangled together in front of his lips.

Giving voice to another thoughtful hum, Garrus spoke into his comm again, "Tali, how are things up there?"

 _"Fine. There don't seem to be any more of them here."_

 _"There're a few up on top of the ship,"_ Joker said, cutting in. _"I think they're trying to get through."_

Kaidan rose as soon as Joker started speaking, and started up the hangar toward the elevator. "James, you and Cortez stay here. See if you can move a few crates to block that entry point," he said as he went. Into the comm he continued, "Tali, can you get into the ducts and make sure we don't have any surprises? Javik, hang back in case she needs backup."

" _Affirmative,"_ Tali muttered.

"Liara, can you meet Garrus and me? The three of us can head on out and see if we can't get them away from the ship."

Liara made a soft noise of confirmation. _"On my way."_

It threw him off, watching Kaidan step into command again so _suddenly_ , and Garrus realized he'd been expecting to hear Shepard barking at them over the comm again. His expression pinched as he stared down at the Rachni.

"Garrus?"

Looking up, he found Kaidan waiting for him, halfway to the elevator. Garrus stood, shaking the cobwebs from his head as he started after him. "Well," he drawled, "so much for any of us getting that good nights sleep."


	2. Chapter 2

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **2**

* * *

"It's the best course of action. Otherwise—" Garrus wasn't quite _bristling_ as he spoke, but it was a near thing.

"Otherwise we're backed into a corner, defending ourselves, with dwindling supplies," Kaidan said, voice devoid of emotion as he quoted the familiar argument. "I know, and under any other circumstances we _would_ go find their nest but—"

Three days. For _three days_ the two of them had been having this argument. "If Shepard were here you know she'd have us wipe them out before they could whittle us down," Garrus bit out, trying not to _seethe_ in his impotence and irritation. Why Kaidan refused to let them go after the Rachni, find their nest, and wipe them out… He knew his reasons, but that didn't mean Garrus had to _like_ or _agree_ with them.

"But Shepard _isn't here_ ," Kaidan snapped back, and Garrus had almost forgotten how cruel his voice could sound. He crossed his arms defensively over his chest, but leaned forward into Garrus' personal space. Kaidan just _looked_ at him, and Garrus knew he wouldn't like what he was going to say. "She's not here. I am, and I know that's not what you want, but you have to trust me. If Shepard were here you'd listen to what she said unquestioningly, but you won't even give me the benefit of the doubt."

Garrus let out a hiss, and now he _was_ bristling. "Shepard earned my confidence and respect," he bit out, words sharp and underscored by an angry, bronchial sound. "You haven't." Shoulders tense, and head held high, Garrus turned and stalked away, stiff legged, before Kaidan could think of a rebuttal.

He had a vague memory of three years ago, give or take, when he'd looked at an angry, retired General and said _'How could you let one woman effect you this much?'_ Septimus, had been his name. If he was still alive, Garrus had a feeling he owed him a drink.

Then again, from what he remembered Septimus had been a hell of a mess until Shepard kicked some sense into him. She was good at that.

Garrus made his way down to the Shuttle Bay, and more specifically, the part of it that made up the armory. He pulled his rifles from his weapons locker and set about dismantling the both of them, cleaning each part thoroughly, and checking for damage. The rhythm of the simple work was soothing, even if it couldn't quite chase away the lingering vestiges of his frustration.

The elevator opened, foot steps sounding, and Garrus tensed automatically. He didn't look up from the gun in his hands as his visitor approached him. The steps were too heavy to be Kaidan.

"So, I heard you and Kaidan had another go at each other," James said, leaning on the table beside him. "You two are butting heads worse than Grunt and Wrex at the party."

"He's not listening to reason," Garrus said flatly, snapping the final piece of his rifle back into place. He held it up and sighted down the scope, caressing the trigger lovingly. He wished he had something in his crosshairs right then…

Amiably, James shot back, "And neither are you."

Garrus sent him a glare sidelong through the gleam of his visor. James wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean he had to like it. "Doesn't matter anyway. He has authority here."

While Garrus began to disassemble his assault rifle, James shoved off the table and wandered a few steps away. "Hey, Scars, I heard a little rumor awhile back that I've been meaning to ask you about. You know, when we had the time and all?" Garrus glanced back and made a disinterested sound, though that seemed to only _encourage_ James to continue. "See, I heard you were one of the best hand to hand fighters around."

"Rumor has it right," Garrus drawled, unable to help himself. The bait was right there. "Why? You want to try me?"

Of course, it also reminded him of _Shepard_ but what didn't lately? She was always on his mind, a constant, nagging worry.

"Yeah, actually."

At that, Garrus _did_ turn to face James. He considered him a moment, then set about reassembling his assault rifle. He'd give it a good cleaning later. "Alright," he said. "I'll wipe the floor with you if that's what you want."

James grinned, all cock-sure. "If you can," he said, heading out toward the middle of the hangar, "you wouldn't be the first. Shepard fights dirty."

 _That_ got a laugh out of Garrus. "Of course she does," he said, setting his gun down and stepping away from the weapon benches. He strode out to meet James, unsurprised at how much he was looking forward to a bit of roughhousing. Right now, he _needed_ this.

"Oh?" James brought his fists up, watching and waiting. "You sound like you know."

"Mmm, I do," Garrus said agreeably. He moved forward, quick and light, his hand snaking out to give James a smart rap across his forearm. "I've sparred with her a few times, fought alongside her even more." _Among other things_.

James ducked, wove, and came in hard. His swings were blunt and brutal, just like he was about everything else. Garrus approved. "Huh. Can't say I ever noticed."

Stepping out of a punishing jab, Garrus kicked out, smirking when James danced away from him, warily eying his spur. "That was before your time here," he drawled. "Back when we were playing _friendly_ with Cerberus for awhile." After the _tie-breaker_ , and the Collectors, before she'd turned herself in to the Alliance and he'd gone to Palaven.

Pushing his momentary break, Garrus stepped in, jabbing a sharp fist at James' ribs. He was caught by a sudden blow to the shoulder that sent him back a quick step. He'd been right: James hit like a Mako and Garrus ought to know. James smirked victoriously, pressing his advantage with another hard hook.

They were quiet a moment, focused on the exchange of blows. In some ways they were evenly matched—Garrus was faster, but James had brute force in a way that Garrus couldn't hope to emulate. Garrus had technique, and James had a zealous drive that seemed to be an integral part of humanity.

After Garrus caught him with a sharp blow to the right cheek, James backed off a bit, circling and catching his breath. "So," he said, eying Garrus. He was looking for weaknesses, and Garrus looked back, searching, seeking. "No one asked me, but if they did I'd say I'm with you. We should go out there, find the nest, and be done with it."

Garrus cocked his head in acknowledgement. "It's the sensible thing to do."

"Kaidan's not wrong in the short term," James pointed out, and Garrus hummed acknowledgment. That he knew as well. Suddenly, James took a half step in, kicked out, and landed a solid blow to Garrus' chest. He stumbled back a few steps, recovered, grabbed the leg and shoved to overbalance the human.

James' recovery was quick, efficient, and he was back for more almost before Garrus realized it. "Here's what I think," James went on, not even missing a beat in the exchange. "You and me. We give it what? A week? If things keep crawlin' then me and you go out, we find the nest, we light it up. Saves everyone a headache, and we get something done."

It occurred to Garrus then, that he wasn't the only one pissed off and frustrated by their situation. James, he well knew, had been antsy to get back to Earth. For him to end up out here, stuck as the rest of them, in the twilight of the war they'd been building toward for months…

"Deal," Garrus said, approval rumbling through his vocals. He sealed it with a hard uppercut that had James' teeth clacking together and that strange, red blood beading on his lip. Before Garrus could push his advantage, however, the elevator whooshed open once more.

Liara strode out, directly toward them with that look and purpose that had both combatants stepping back, relaxing, and turning all attention to her. Sometimes, Garrus didn't know how she'd gone from the awkward woman they'd plucked out of an energy field on Therum to this methodical, powerful being. She'd _become_ the Shadow Broker in more ways than one.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, not looking or sounding it at all. Her eyes zeroed in on Garrus with the intensity of a laser. "Garrus, I have something you need to see." With that, she nodded at James and turned back, boots clacking authoritatively on the floor. Garrus slanted a look toward James who shrugged. With a brief nod, he started after Liara.

"You owe me a rematch later!" James hollered after them as the elevator door closed.

As they were born upward, Garrus turned to Liara. "What's going on?"

For a moment, her cool facade slipped and she looked as vulnerable as he'd ever seen her before. Liara crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at the floor. "I managed to get some information finally."

Garrus' heart seized up, his throat going tight, and his hearing buzzing unpleasantly. He'd known, of course, that if anyone could get information from beyond the planet they'd crashed on, it would be Liara but…

The elevator came to a halt, and she was out of it quickly. Liara waved him after her, hurried steps leading the way toward the little office she'd made herself out of the XO's quarters. A part of him felt like he was wading through water, the world slowing down and expanding around him. He breathed in, forced himself to find that center point—look down the scope, breathe, wait.

Liara rushed to her terminal and tapped at it, calling up an audio log. Thick static sounded in the room, and for a moment he couldn't make out any words. Then the static cleared slightly, Glyph quipping behind them, "I did my best to make it as clear as possible."

 _"—egun to—ruins—he Citadel—"_ a male voice said, skipping and elongating, deepening as the corruption twisted it. _"So man—dead. Thousa—Recover—Anderson's body—center of it a— No sign of Shepar—Commander miss—Presumed dead."_

It felt like the world had gone quiet, a vacuum of space that opened up right around him and him alone. Garrus stood stock still, the corrupted recording repeating itself in the background. He was frozen, an immovable object that had just met another immovable object.

"Garrus," Liara said, and the quiet sorrow broke him out of his stupor in the way ice cold water couldn't have. "I'm so—"

"Don't," he rasped, slashing a hand through the air. Without another word, he turned and he left.

* * *

He wasn't sure why this was hitting him so hard. By rights, it shouldn't have. Garrus had been expecting this news since he'd watched Shepard head toward that beam, leaving him behind again.

It really shouldn't have hit him this hard, but it had.

Garrus squeezed his eyes shut against the headache building, and stepped out of the elevator. He had every intention of making his way to the mess, grabbing something to eat and retreating to Shepard's cabin. He was brought up short, however, before he could turn the corner into the rest of the Crew Deck.

"—seemed like things were going alright," Kaidan was saying. Garrus came to a dead stop, frozen at the corner of the wall where the elevator was berthed.

"Things will right themselves in due time," Liara answered, voice soft and quietly. The smell of the calming, warm tea that she favored floated in the air, herbal and strange. "Time, I think, is what he needs most right now. Particularly with the news I gave him—"

"I know," Kaidan said, voice tight pinched. "He's not the only one grieving."

Something tight twisted in Garrus' chest. It felt a _bit_ like guilt. Joker wasn't the only one who understood exactly where he was right now. Kaidan had mourned the woman he loved before as well. The same woman Garrus was grieving now, in fact. And Liara… If it hadn't been for her, Shepard never would have returned to them.

There was a shift, the sound of the chairs turning under someone's weight. "Give him time, and then speak to him," Liara said, voice warm and firm. "Garrus will come around. We're all...none of us like this, but we need each other now more than ever."

Kaidan coughed out a dry laugh. "You sound like Shepard."

Garrus could easily imagine Liara's wry smile, her eyes sly but well-meaning and bright. "Ah, did I? I was trying…"

"Yeah…" Kaidan said, huffing out a sigh. His voice turned serious again. "You're certain though, that it's not—"

Without a sound, Garrus turned on his heel and headed toward the Port Observation Deck, unwilling to _spy_ any further. What he'd heard, and what he hadn't heard, left a sour, bitter taste in his mouth. Maybe if he was lucky, he and Tali had missed a bottle that he could spirit back up with him instead.

* * *

Garrus had sequestered himself in the empty Life Support room. Ever since Thane had left the _Normandy_ after their suicide run on the Collectors it had remained uninhabited. Arid, dry, quiet...just the hum of the ship's systems buzzing through the walls. No one thought to check for him here, and without EDI to tip them off...well, all the better for a hiding place.

Two days on, and he still didn't know what to do with himself. He itched to find something in the crosshairs of his scope, itched to tear the world apart until he could rip through rubble and look for Shepard himself. He wondered, beginning the routine of disassembling his guns again by rote, if this was how Kaidan had felt before.

He wanted to ask him, but that childish part of him was still angry. If it weren't for Kaidan he could be out there hunting Rachni instead of dwelling on this.

The door shushed open, and Garrus jerked his head up to watch Javik stride in. All four of those yellow eyes landed on him, and Javik snorted. He sounded just as haughty and disinterested as ever. "Everyone is looking for you, you realize," he said, staring Garrus down the way one might a mildly interesting, but ultimately unimportant insect.

"Well, here I am," Garrus drawled, looking back to his guns.

"Yes," Javik echoed hollowly. "Here you are. Sulking."

Garrus ground his teeth against the urge to turn and _clock him_. Javik always managed to rub people the wrong way without trying—by just being _himself_. If there was anything Garrus didn't need or want right now it was _Javik_.

Javik, of course, had other plans. He stalked further into the room to stand near the internal window overlooking the drive core, covered though it was, and clasped his hands at the small of his back. "They wish to hold a memorial," he said. "For the departed."

"I'm aware of what a memorial is," Garrus said flatly, hoping his tone conveyed the fact that _he was a sentient being, thank you._

"The asari," Javik went on as if he hadn't heard him, "is insistent on speaking to you about this."

That explained more than it didn't. Liara had a way of irritating Javik just as much as Javik threw her off-kilter and made her angry. It also meant that Garrus could get _rid_ of Javik easily. "I'll go talk to Liara," he said.

Javik jerked his head, satisfied that what he'd come to accomplish had been done. He turned to leave, but stopped at the door. "For whatever it is worth, the galaxy has lost a great leader." With that, Javik was out the door as suddenly as he'd arrived. Garrus supposed that was as close to a condolence as anyone would ever get from him.

He spent a few minutes longer than strictly necessary making certain his well-kept guns were in pristine condition before he shouldered them, rose, and headed out. It took awhile to find Liara, and when he did it was in the forward battery. She leapt to her feet as soon as Garrus walked through the door as if she'd been waiting to ambush him.

"The one time I'm _not_ here," he said by way of greeting, and Liara gave him a faint smile in return. It faded away quickly, and Garrus matched her. He leaned back against the wall by the door, letting it close automatically.

"How are you holding up?" she asked. Liara was normally so...animated when she spoke—her hands moved, her expressions told a whole story so long as she trusted you to see it. Now, though, she looked drawn and tired.

He couldn't bring himself to even try lying to her.

"Not good," he said, ducking his head. "Shepard's...a hard woman to get out of your head." She was a woman that he didn't _want_ out of his head.

"I understand." Liara stepped forward and reached out to rest her hand on his forearm. "Believe me, I do. I think we all want to believe she could pull off the impossible again but…"

"But even her luck has to run out sometime," he finished for her, letting out a heavy breath. It was exactly what he'd been thinking ever since he'd heard that transmission. Not even Shepard could walk out of certain death yet again, could she?

With a sharp nod, Liara stepped back and crossed her arms over her breasts. She looked...small in a way she hadn't since she'd become the Shadow Broker. "That's why we want to add her name to the wall," she said quietly, voice pinched. "We've...all had to mourn her once already. I don't know—"

He could hear it even if she didn't say it. She wasn't sure if _any_ of them could take mourning Shepard again, not like those two years after Alchera. "Right," he said, hoarsely, because what could he say? There was no hiding the bronchial, pained whine that entered his voice, so he didn't even try.

"I'm sorry." She turned toward him then, shoulders going back and posture straightening. Garrus envied her strength. "We discussed it; Kaidan, myself, and the rest of the crew. We want you to be the one to..to place her name."

Garrus looked down and away from her, unable to look into the fragile, torn expression and see the sympathy and understanding there. He didn't want to do this, but he could understand why the rest of them did. It made him angry that they were ready and willing to call her dead already, but he couldn't be upset with _them._ Not when he understood exactly why they did.

"Alright," he said at last. "When?"

"Tomorrow. We've already taken care of it...the last thing was speaking to you."

* * *

Garrus turned the nameplate over and over in his hands, the fading daylight of their prison planet reflecting off the dark metal and white name. Commander Shepard. Not even her first name, just...who the galaxy had known her as best. He suspected she would have appreciated that. She was Shepard, at the end, and not even the woman herself could deny it.

The sound of limping footsteps had Garrus looking up. Joker lifted his hand to wave at him. "I didn't know turians were into sunbathing," he said. "Your armor better not have scratched my baby or I'm going to have words."

Looking down, Garrus shifted over on the edge of the _Normandy's_ wing where he'd perched himself. "I think scuffs from my armored ass are the least of your worries."

"Eh, probably." Joker leaned up against the side of the ship, squinting from beneath the brim of his hat at the storm clouds boiling in the distance. The two of them sat in silence, watching the flicker of lightning across the black underbelly of the clouds. It looked like the storm was headed their way. The cool gusts that heralded its approach smelled like rain.

Joker let out a breath. "Hey," he said, "I'm glad you haven't given up on her yet."

For a long, still moment, Garrus stared at the clouds over the trees. A part of him thought _never_ , but he knew she would hate him for that. "Not until I know for certain," he said instead, because he and Shepard had always been strong people, the both of them. They knew better than anyone that life carried on.

"It's good to see someone still has that hope," Joker said frankly. "After all we've been through it gets kinda hard, you know?"

"Yeah." Garrus shifted, leaning forward and resting his forearm on one knee. The nameplate dangled in his grasp. "Call me selfish, but I want to believe she's still alive out there. She came back to us once…"

"I don't know if I'd call that selfish." Joker gave the _Normandy's_ side a pat. "Hell, maybe it is, but there's nothing wrong with wanting someone important back."

"If there's any hope for EDI, it's Tali," Garrus offered. Tali, who'd barely left the AI core since they crashed. Tali, who Garrus knew was working herself to the bone trying to figure out what the problems were with the _Normandy's_ systems, and not just her AI. He needed to hunt her down and make sure she was doing alright. She'd seemed so...drawn at the memorial earlier, shoulders hunched and so diminutive in her enviro-suit.

"I know."

Looking down, Garrus slid his thumb along the bold white of Shepard's name. "I don't know how Kaidan did it," he said quietly. "Even if it took two years, and she walked back into my life…." He let out a breath that was half laugh. "I think I'd still drop everything for her all over again."

"A lot of us would." Joker reached over and carefully thumped a hand against Garrus' shoulder. "There's no one else we'd rather follow into hell over and over again."

This time, Garrus laughed outright. "Isn't that the truth?"

Silence fell between them again, broken only by the distant rumble of thunder. They stayed there, watching the clouds blacken the sky until the first pelting drops of rain hit the _Normandy._

* * *

It was a few more days on, with no progress, no change, no news, and Shepard's nameplate sitting heavy in one of Garrus' spare ammo packs, that Kaidan cornered him outside the men's restroom.

"Can we talk?" Kaidan asked immediately, and Garrus blinked. He looked intent on it, and it wasn't like Garrus had been avoiding him _exactly_.

"Alright," he said with a shrug. Kaidan jerked his head toward Life Support and Garrus followed him into the empty room.

Kaidan rounded on him as soon as the doors closed. "I get that you're not happy with me, but I need to know...Is this about Shepard and me?" Kaidan asked, bluntly. He stared at Garrus for several long seconds as Garrus did his best impression of a fish out of water. "About what we were before, I mean."

 _That_ threw him even further for a loop.

"No," Garrus said, and good, he sounded as flabberghasted as he felt. "That doesn't have anything to do with this. What you two were… I'd rather _not_ tempt fate by having _Shepard_ of all people mad at me for thinking it was _any_ of my business. That was between the two of you."

Kaidan deflated a bit, relief flickering into his expression. "Oh. Good. Yeah, she'd kill you for that, wouldn't she?"

"I'd sooner face a Reaper on foot," Garrus vowed. Watching _Shepard_ do that over and over had been bad enough... "Look...it's not anything like that." He ground his teeth. He didn't want to admit it, but he wasn't a coward, and they'd all been through enough together to lay their cards on the table when it counted. "It just hurt to see you step into her place."

Immediately, Kaidan's face went blank as stone, then he sagged. "Yeah," he said, and Garrus was surprised with how _much_ agreement he heard in his tone. "It hurts me too, you know? This is her ship...her crew, her place. And then I have to butt heads with you and it feels like everyone's questioning what I'm doing."

Garrus grimaced. He hadn't thought of it that way. Huffing a sigh out his nose, he leaned his shoulder against the wall. "You're doing what needs to be done, and I'm being an idiot. Mind you, being an idiot has served me well on occasion, but that doesn't mean it doesn't _fail_ sometimes too."

"That's true." Kaidan let out a breathy laugh, and gave Garrus a quick smile. "Look, I know how badly you want to go after the Rachni, but...give it a bit first and then a few of us can go. Just until we're certain we're stuck here longer than we expected."

It was probably a good idea not to mention his deal with James. Garrus would just let James know about the changed parameters on the sly. "Hmm, deal." He shoved back off the wall and held his hand out, smirking when Kaidan gave him a wide grin and gripped his hand in a firm shake. "Oh, and, one other thing," Garrus said. "I don't _always_ follow Shepard's orders unquestioningly, you know." That was part of why he was such a bad turian.

Kaidan laughed again, waving him off. "And I'm not trying to take her place. Even if she's gone..." The thought of 'that's too big a place for anyone to fill' settled between them, acknowledged and with no need to be spoken. Garrus grimaced, looking away, the moment of good humor dying between them. Letting out a breath, Kaidan ran a hand through his hair then met Garrus' eyes dead on again. "You're stronger than I am."

"No," Garrus said. "I'm just hard headed." He crossed his arms over his chest, staring toward the covered window overlooking the drive core. "Learned it from the best." From his father, from irritating C-Sec officers, from unwilling Council members, and from _Shepard_.

Turning away, Kaidan walked over to the window and Garrus followed a few steps behind. He leaned back against the small table there, while Kaidan rested his arm on the window. They both stared at where the _Normandy's_ inert core lay, hidden behind a thin covering.

"It was hell," Kaidan said quietly, "when she died...and I never knew how she felt." He snorted quietly and rubbed a hand over his face. "You were better for her than I was anyway. You trusted her when I didn't...had her back when I was too angry…"

"It looked bad," Garrus allowed, voice just as quiet. He crossed his arms, breathing out through his nose. "I remember when we ran into you on Horizon. You didn't see how angry she was after that. How hurt."

"I know." Kaidan pressed his forehead against his uplifted arm, eyes closed. "I should have been there."

"She'd changed, you'd changed...We all did." For better, or for worse, those two years and the mission afterward—Cerberus, all of it—had irrefutably changed them all. Garrus had watched Shepard become a little harder during their chase for the Collectors. She'd been tough before, but the atrocities they'd found out there… They'd all needed it, in a way, to steel themselves for the war they knew was coming.

Kaidan made a quiet noise of agreement. "I said as much to her...sent a private mail. I guess a part of me still hoped we could fix things, but… I guess it was too little, too late." He shrugged, and turned toward Garrus, leaning back beside the window. He smiled at him. "You made her happy."

Once again, Garrus looked away. He hated the way they talked about her like that sometimes, like they'd already buried her. "There's no one else quite like her out there."

"No...there really isn't." Kaidan glanced to the side as well, staring off past Garrus at some distant point he couldn't see. "I'm not either, you know. Mad about it. Her and you. Maybe I was for a while, but..."

Garrus shrugged. "It never occurred to me to worry about it," he drawled. "I was too busy trying to figure out if there _was_ a her and me."

To his surprise, Kaidan laughed. "I know what you mean." Kaidan straightened and stepped away from the wall. He moved toward the door, glancing sidelong at Garrus. "Anyway, I should get back to work."

"Of course," Garrus said, waving him off.

Kaidan hesitated a moment longer. "Just...remember I'm not trying to replace her or anything." He paused, then let out a quiet huff of a laugh. "I'm not into turians that way, anyway."

 _That_ surprised a laugh out of _Garrus_. "Your loss," he drawled. "I happen to have a really nice sister." A sister he hadn't heard anything from since his father and she had made it off Palaven. Just like with Shepard, though, Garrus wasn't willing to give up hope. He had to wonder when he'd become so optimistic.

Laughing quietly, Kaidan left the room, leaving Garrus to the quiet hum of the life support systems and his own thoughts.

He'd give her two years again, and if she didn't reappear in his life...then he'd know she really was gone.

"Two years, Shepard," he said quietly. "After that…" Garrus reached back and touched the ammo pack that rested at his waist, full of extra thermal clips and that damning nameplate.

After that, he'd live on and figure out what to do with his life now that the best part of it had been ripped out. Garrus closed his eyes briefly, then stepped away from the table and headed out of Life Support. He might as well find something to work on like the rest of the team.

They weren't going to get off this planet by just twiddling their thumbs, and if they didn't get off this planet he couldn't start scouring the galaxy for Shepard.

He hadn't promised he'd spend those two years doing _nothing_ , after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **3**

* * *

"You _can_ call me Steve, you know."

" _Right_. That's what your name was." Garrus glanced sidelong at Cortez—alright, Steve as he said it. "You humans. All your names sound so _alike_."

Steve, for his part, laughed, and Garrus was saved from having to admit that he really _had_ forgotten the man's name.

"Both of these boxes are full of thermal clips," Tali called from her perch across from them. "The third is medi-gel." Beside Garrus, Steve made a note on his datapad.

Nearly two and a half months on, and it was becoming clear that they might not be getting out of here any time soon. Without EDI the _Normandy_ 's systems couldn't quite operate at the efficiency needed. They were tied too deeply to the ship's AI, and until they could find a way to get her functional again or rewire the entire system...

Add to that, a ruptured eezo fuel line and they were in it for the long haul.

The elevator opened in a hush of machinery, and all three of them turned toward it. The human woman drew up short under their combined regard. It was easy, Garrus reflected, to forget that they had a technical civilian on the _Normandy_. Diana Allers, he thought her name was. She was a reporter, quiet and out of the way. He only ever caught glimpses of her during meals, or when she was on her way to speak to someone. She'd never approached him personally.

She looked between them uncertainly, then to the mess they'd made while taking inventory. "Can I help?" she asked at last.

"You don't have to," Steve said, holding up his hands.

Diana shook her head and waded between the various crates and boxes toward them. "I asked Traynor if there was anything I could do and she suggested I come help with inventory." She shrugged self-consciously, but plopped herself down among the odds and ends, cross-legged. "I figure we're all stuck here together, so I may as well contribute."

Garrus nudged the box of spare parts toward her. "You can finish sorting these. I want to get a look at our food stores."

"Sure," she said agreeably. "You think my producers will pay well for the story of our heroic survival on a jungle planet?"

Steve laughed as Garrus passed Diana his datapad. "Can't say I know anything about show business, ma'am."

"You're worried," Tali said quietly, following after him toward the large crates where the rations were kept.

"Aren't you?" He reached up and freed the manifest from the crates straps. They'd sort through it later to get rid of anything that had been broken open during the crash. His expression drew tight as he read it over. "We might be in real trouble."

The manifest told him what he already knew. There would be plenty of food to last most of the crew for around six more months. He and Tali had enough to last them half that if they were careful. If they were even _more_ careful they could stretch it a little further. She stepped in closer to his side, her hand coming to rest on his forearm as she peered at the datapad he held.

"We'll manage. Somehow, we always do."

She sounded so _certain_ that he didn't want to say anything cynical, even though he knew Tali was just as practical as he was. No one knew how fleeting supplies could be like quarians. "Somehow," he said instead. "We have a lot to get back to, after all."

Her grip on him tightened a moment before she stepped away and turned to lean on the crate. She wrung her hands together. "I really wish Shepard were here," she admitted. She sounded almost afraid to, and with the way her head jerked he supposed she was worried about his reaction. "She always knew just what to do, what to say."

Garrus looked down, ostensibly focusing on the manifest. He wasn't really seeing it at all. Finally, he said, "She's out there, somewhere." It was the only thing he had to cling to, the one thing he felt so _certain_ of.

"I hope so."

Right then, Tali sounded so sad, so _miserable,_ that it felt like his own heartache was reflected right back at him. The entire crew felt like this, he knew, like they were missing a vital organ. The worst part was that none of them were krogan. They didn't have a redundant system to fall back on. If Shepard was gone, cut from their lives for good, there was going to be a hole in all of them that would never really heal.

Each and every one of them knew that. They'd fallen apart without her before, after all.

"If she really is gone," Tali whispered, an odd sound through her enviro-suit's speakers, "promise that you'll stay in contact this time? After everything that's happened I don't want all of us to drift apart like that again."

"Of course." He didn't want that either. If anything he was going to _need_ these people. They were the only real friends he had in this damned galaxy, if he were honest. Shepard may have been his nearest and dearest, but everyone on the _Normandy_ was family in some way. If he'd lost Shepard… Garrus stared blankly at the manifest he held, throat closed tight.

It was a cold comfort that at least he'd gotten to say goodbye to her, tell her he loved her before she'd gone. He'd missed his chance to do that with his mother, and he'd told himself that he was going to make sure he didn't miss it with Shepard.

A cold, cold comfort indeed.

Joker's voice over the _Normandy's_ systems broke through his stupor, and Garrus glanced up automatically. _"Not to interrupt your fun down in the hold, but uh….We've got trouble."_

Without a word, Tali straightened up next to him. "We're on our way, Joker."

Garrus followed her back toward the elevator, stopping only to hand off the manifest to Steve and Diana. He waved off their worried questions, and stepped into the elevator alongside Tali. It bore them upward to the CIC. When they reached the cockpit, Kaidan, James, and Liara were already there.

"We've got hostile signatures closing in fast," Kaidan said, nodding to the two of them.

Liara leaned forward, studying the readouts before Joker. "Those signatures...it's the Rachni again."

"Damn. I thought we'd seen the last of them," Garrus hissed. "If we hurry, we can cut off their approach before they reach the ship."

Kaidan gave another tight nod, turning to head toward the airlock with James in tow. "Let's make a go of it, then. Garrus, think you can find a good nest to keep an eye on things from?"

"Absolutely." That was, after all, what he was best at. "I noticed a few likely trees on my outings."

"Right. Split up into three teams," Kaidan said as he strode out into the sunlight. He gestured with his hands, quick military movements that had Liara and James falling off to the right while Tali stuck with Kaidan. Garrus gave the four of them a quick glance, then loped off toward the large bower he'd eyed up as a good sniper's nest in the weeks before now.

The clearing around the _Normandy_ wasn't particularly large, but it gave them ample open space with enough cover at the edges to set their ambush up. Garrus swung and clambered his way up into the tight knit branches before settling between a few of the larger limbs. He nudged aside the massive leaves with the barrel of his gun, sighted down the scope, and watched.

"Here they come. I can see them moving between the roots." He paused then, barked, "Workers coming in fast!"

Tali's unhappy noise was drowned out by the racket of gunfire and exploding insect bodies. The utter calm of a firefight settled over him as Garrus tracked the movement of the workers over the roots. They swarmed around them, emerging from the greenery in scuttling clusters. Liara and Kaidan's biotics lit the air with their eerie, warping blue glow ripping the clusters into the air. Garrus followed one in his scope as it was thrown high, spinning against a backdrop of thick trees. A single shot cracked out, and it exploded in the air like a plate on a training field.

"Score one," he crowed.

 _"I have to wonder how no one's ever found you with the way you go on,"_ James said, voice tinged with communications static in his ear. Garrus just laughed, glancing along the treeline.

No matter what else was happening in his world, he could trust how he felt behind a scope with his finger crooked against a trigger. "Heads up," he called. "Soldiers incoming." Bit by bit, he let his world narrow down to the crack of rifle fire, the automatic movements of ejecting the spent clip and slotting in another one.

He smelled the ozone-ash smell of the thermal clips as they clattered away, and the familiar musk of gun oil from his well cared for weapons. The recoil was smooth, familiar, and simple. This was all so _simple_. Find the target, line up the shot, take the shot.

It was so damned easy to fall into the rhythm of picking out his allies among the cover and the enemies; so damned easy to call out warnings when they were being flanked, to let them know where they needed to be.

So damned easy to fall into the routine, to automatically look for the stripe of red on black, that familiar ramrod posture and vicious, overwhelming force.

Garrus missed his next shot, going wide and hitting the broad side of a nearby tree trunk. The Rachni soldier shrunk back, hissing before Tali reduced it to pulp with her shotgun. Slowly, Garrus lowered his rifle down to rest on his lap, head bowing.

 _"Garrus?"_ Tali's concern was palpable. He passed his hand over his face, over his rifle. How he could think _anything_ could be simple right now… _"Are you alright? Do you need back-up?"_

"Fine," he said, knowing he was anything but.

She must have realized that too, something in his voice he guessed. _"Garrus…"_

He breathed out and brought his rifle up. "Later," he said. "Let's finish up here."

* * *

Tali tracked him down in the starboard observation deck. "The view's not too great," he said when she walked over to join him by the window. With the _Normandy's_ angle, all he could really see was jagged rock and a few scrub bushes. Nothing exciting, but it fit for his morose mood.

"How did your chat with Kaidan go?" she asked, settling onto one of the benches. Garrus turned to face her.

"I'm taking Liara and James out to see if we can find the nest tomorrow."

Tali bobbed her head in agreement. They needed Kaidan to stay here as their defacto leader, and Tali was better at dealing with synthetics. Garrus turned to look back out at the rocky promontory beyond. He could distantly hear the rumble of far off thunder—another storm coming in. Tali shifted, her suit scratching against the leather of the seat.

"You missed your shot," she said, quiet but prompting.

"I…" He paused, let the words trail off and his vocals twang uncomfortably. Garrus closed his eyes and bowed his head. "I found myself looking for Shepard." He slouched, his hand rising to rub over his face and brow.

He'd looked for her automatically, so damned used to finding her among the fighting—watching her back against whatever odds were being thrown at them. The guilt overwhelmed him. He should have _been there._

Tali stood, stepping in close to his side. She rested her hand on his arm, offering unassuming comfort. "You couldn't have done anything else."

"She—" He swallowed, his throat tight. "She died out there alone." The words felt like a betrayal on his tongue, but it was _so hard_ to keep on hoping. He didn't know how long he could keep it up.

"If," Tali said, stressing the word. "If she died, she died knowing you were safe." Her grasp on him tightened for a moment before she reached out and took hold of his hands with hers. "You know that's what was most important to her."

Garrus looked at her, and then away, letting himself stew in the guilt, the grief, in a way he'd been fighting against for so long now. "I know," he said, voice bronchial and twanging with his grief. Without a word, Tali stepped forward and wrapped her slim arms around him in a tight hug. It reminded him of when Shepard had pulled her in, embracing her when they found her father's body on the overrun lab ship. He returned it, awkward but accepting.

"Believe in her, Garrus," she said into his shoulder. "If you stop then the rest of us have no hope."

"I will." He knew he would, because he had to. Garrus had never been good at being optimistic, but just this once he wanted to _try_. He wanted to have hope that the person he loved would be alright, even though they'd all gone into this expecting not to come out.

There were always losses in war. Everyone was bound to lose someone, but just this once he wanted things to turn out alright.

He wanted just one more thing in this fucked up galaxy to go _right_.

Tali stepped back, reaching up to pat him on the shoulder. "Come on. We still have work to do."

Garrus nodded and straightened, taking a deep breath. "I'll be a minute. Just need to clear my head." She bobbed a nod at him, and turned to leave. Just as she reached the door he called after her, "And Tali? ...Thank you."

"Of course. We're here when you need us."

Nothing else had ever been so true about any crew or squad he'd worked with. Working on the _Normandy_ had changed him forever, in all the best and worst ways.

"I know."

* * *

"I wouldn't have expected them to be so hard to track." Liara settled her SMG into place at her hip, Glyph hovering at her side. "It's been a week now."

"With all the patrols we've run into, you'd think we have found _something_." James scowled, sighting along his shotgun, flipped it around, and shoved it into place.

They were gearing up, getting ready to head out for another day of searching for the Rachni nest. While they'd managed to wipe out all the scouts and forward patrols that had come near the _Normandy_ they'd come no closer to locating whatever hole they'd crawled out of in the first place.

"Too bad the shuttle bay is still blocked," Garrus drawled, slotting a fresh thermal clip into his assault rifle. "It would make things a _lot_ faster."

"If I may make a suggestion?" Glyph piped up, moving over to hover before the three of them.

Liara glanced up from looking over her pistol. "What is it, Glyph?"

"I have uncovered a missive in the Commander's personal files regarding the KEI-9 unit kept on this ship," Glyph chirped. "Sophie is capable of tracking chemical trails."

"Oh!" Liara turned toward where Sophie sat. The mech's stubby tail began wagging under their attention. "We could program her to follow the Rachni's chemical signature. Glyph, that's brilliant!"

"Thank you, Doctor."

Garrus stepped back, holstering his assault rifle over his back next to his sniper. "It's worth a shot. Can you program her?"

"There should be enough left over from the first attack on the _Normandy_. I can see that she gets the necessary information. One moment, please."

Glyph whirred down to hover around Sophie, who tilted her head at the drone. A few seconds later, she ducked and bounced her feet clacking on the metal floor. She looked like a varren who'd just been told it was allowed to chase pyjaks all day. Glyph floated off down the shuttle bay toward where the Rachni broke into the ship, Sophie galloping after.

Garrus watched them go and stepped away from the weapon's lockers. "I'll take that as a good sign." Down near the back of the hangar, the blue glow of the mech's scan lit the walls up.

"If Glyph says it can work, I have no doubt," Liara murmured, watching the drone hover sedately back toward them. "It's just a matter of how far off the nest is."

"I'll go secure some rations and meet you two up at the airlock," James said, grabbing his assault rifle and heading for the elevator. "Never hurts to be prepared, yeah?"

Garrus turned back to Glyph as he approached them. "Shall I program Sophie's signature into your Omni-tool?" the drone asked, floating up before him.

"Do it. Can you give me a visual on the chemical trails she's following too?"

"Of course."

"Route it through my visor."

Almost immediately part of the visual input field in his visor lit up with the new information. It made patches of the shuttle bay glow like neon lights. Garrus reached up, adjusting the settings slightly then nodded.

"Good work." Garrus turned toward Liara and nodded toward the elevator as Sophie came bounding back over to them. "I just hope Vega remembers to get something that I can _eat_."

Laughing softly, Liara stepped onto the elevator ahead of him. "I know you," she said. "You have a few ration bars hidden in your ammo packs. You'll be fine."

"I'm saving those for a special occasion."

With a metallic sound, Sophie sat down on the elevator's floor between them. They were borne swiftly upward to the CIC and from there they headed for the airlock. Joker and James were waiting for them.

Joker waved as they approached, and turned to wander back into his domain. "Have fun on your picnic kids."

"Thanks. We'll bring you back something," Garrus called after him.

"Better not be Rachni!"

Huffing out a laugh, Garrus lead the way out of the ship and into the hot, muggy air of the planet beyond. Over their time stranded they'd come to learn that the area was highly prone to intense thunderstorms. There was one daily, if not more. Looking up, Garrus scanned what he could of the skyline. There was nary a cloud to be seen, just the sun up high and steam rising from the massive trees as the day warmed up.

The constant wet hadn't helped with their tracking efforts either.

Sophie trotted off ahead of him, her scans gleaming like spiderweb filaments. The area lit up in Garrus' visor with traces of the Rachni's chemical signature. As Liara and James fell in with him and the three of them followed after the mech, Garrus wondered at how things had changed.

Not even a year ago he'd been doubting his capabilities to lead a squad, any squad. After Omega, and after Sidonis he hadn't thought he'd ever be cut out for it. But then there was Shepard, and when wasn't there? _She_ had had confidence in _him_ , and somehow he'd found his own confidence in that.

Without that, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to get anywhere with the task force that had been handed to him. He wondered how they were doing, back on Palaven. They all wondered a lot of things.

"Looks like she's got a trail," he murmured. They ducked under a low hanging, massive fern and moved deeper into the trees. Soon enough the bright sunlight was all but gone, enveloping them in a shadowy green world.

"We're heading downhill," Liara reported. "Glyph, can you keep a read on the _Normandy's_ location for us? We're going to reach the limits of our short range transmissions soon."

"Of course, Doctor."

"Downhill and into thicker jungle," James said, one hand on his shotgun. "I got that feeling like we're walking into a trap."

"Oh?" Garrus mused. "You mean my entire life?"

James coughed on a laugh and shot him a broad grin. "That's what you get for deciding to date Lola."

Humming agreeably, Garrus said, "At least we keep it exciting." He reached up and adjusted his visor, overlaying the gleam of chemicals to look for heat signatures, heartbeats, anything to spot enemies before they spotted them. There was a lot of life down here, further away from the crash site. Massive insects, and lizards crawling among the trees and over the ground. They steered well clear of them, haring off in various directions as soon as their approach was noted.

Their path lead them to a slow moving, nearly stagnant pool of water, thick with algae and plant life growing in the wispy sunlight that made it this low. Immense dragonflies sat on the edges of the pool, lifting off like fighter drones as Sophie scrambled up and over a mossy, downed tree trunk.

After they circumvented the pool Liara stopped. She held her arm up, Omni-tool glowing brightly. "We've officially stepped out of communications range with the _Normandy_ ," she said. "We're on our own."

That meant no back-up, and no hope of rescue if things went down badly. It would be days before they'd come looking for them if they went missing, and even then… With the frequent rain and alien terrain they'd be as hard to track down as the Rachni.

"No point in turning back now." Garrus pulled his assault rifle out and readied it. If they were striking out into true unknown, he wasn't going to take any chances. Liara made a soft, affirmative noise and drew out her SMG.

They continued on, weaving among overgrown ferns and massive, jug like flowers. The air was thick with the scent of decaying leaf matter, but slowly another scent began to overlay it. Garrus held his hand up. "You smell that?"

James sniffed at the air, face contorting. "Is that...Smells like smoke?"

"Do you think there are people here?" Liara asked, breathless with the possibility.

"People who may have been torn to shreds by Rachni," Garrus said grimly. He picked up his pace, chasing after Sophie who'd kept on without them.

The jungle gave way so abruptly that he nearly stepped right off the cliffside. It was only thanks to Liara and James grabbing hold of his arms that he didn't. They yanked him back, and together the three of them stood looking down. At the base of the cliff a small collection of prefab units were clustered near generators and mining equipment. A large borehole lead down into the ground. The smoke they'd smelled curled from a sparking and fritzing generator that looked like it was near the end of it's life.

Garrus knelt and swapped his assault rifle for his sniper. He peered through the scope, tracking across small encampment. The doors to the prefab units were closed, their locks glowing innocuously green. "I don't see any movement...and there's no shuttles. Not picking up any vitals. The place looks pretty abandoned to me."

James rapped a knuckle against his armor, and pointed along the side of the cliff. "Looks like there might be a way down over there."

They skirted the edge of the cliff and began picking their way down a narrow edge that could hardly be called a path. At the bottom, Garrus jumped down the last few feet to land heavily among the rock and rubble. The nearest of the buildings was only about ten feet away. Sophie hung back beside him, dogging his steps.

"Glyph?" Liara said behind him. "Scout ahead would you?"

"Certainly, Doctor."

The drone few past Garrus' head and disappeared among the units. The smell of smoke and the ozone tint of fried generator was more prevalent the closer they got. Sophie's continued scans showed the place practically _glowing_ with the Rachni's signature.

"Be careful," he murmured, holding one hand up. "I don't like this." With a wave, the other two peeled off. Garrus crept up along the side and around to the front. The borehole shone like a star in his visor's sensors. There was little doubt in his mind that they were standing on the Rachni's nest.

 _"The camp appears to be abandoned,"_ Glyph chirped over the comm. _"However, I did discover a terminal with heavy encryption. Would you like me to extract the data?"_

Liara responded before Garrus could. _"Do it."_

Turning, Garrus walked up the front ramp of the building he was beside, feeling like a sniper had their scope trained between his shoulders. The door hushed open, revealing a small living setup. A tiny kitchen, a sitting area, and a bed jammed in one corner. The place stank of rotten food. He swept his gaze over the interior, and went stock still.

Well, that wasn't good.

At the same moment, Glyph spoke up again. _"This appears to be an abandoned Cerberus research facility."_

Garrus stared at the Cerberus emblem on the building's interior wall. "They told Shepard they stopped experimenting with the Rachni," he growled.

 _"The last entry is dated for over half a year ago while their last official report was sent more than two years prior. The main facility appears to be located in the tunnels."_

He stepped back out of the building to stare at the borehole, breathed out through his nose, and swapped his sniper back out for the assault rifle. "Looks like we're heading down then. Finish sweeping the buildings first."

A pair of quiet affirmatives reached him as Garrus backed out of the unit and paced over toward the stairs leading up to the one above it. He nudged the door open, leaning around the corner to peer inside. A simple laboratory set up greeted him, monitors scrolling with corrupted information and nonsense data.

He stepped inside, poking through piles of defunct technology and useless tools. The brief blue glow of Sophie's scans lit the room, showing it as covered in the Rachni's signature as the rest of the encampment. Garrus stepped back out of the small room.

"All clear here," he said.

 _"Clear here,"_ James muttered. _"There's not even a drop of blood. Reminds me too much of—"_

"Yeah," Garrus muttered. It was just a _little_ too like the Collectors. Like colonies that were so empty it seemed as if everyone had just stood up and walked away.

 _"Clear here as well,"_ Liara murmured, breaking through his thoughts.

Garrus stepped heavily down the stairs, Sophie trailing after him, and moved to stand on the edge of gaping borehole at the center of the camp. James joined him shortly with Liara, Glyph bobbing right behind her.

"Finally," James said, grinning like a krogan in a bar brawl. "Let's show'em why they shouldn't have darkened our doorstep."

Liara sighed faintly. "I'm glad at least one of us is having fun. I'd hoped we'd left behind fights with Rachni in mines years ago."

Garrus snorted and started down the nearby ramp. "Like we'd ever be so lucky."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, following after him. "We have proven to have rather uncanny luck over the years."

At the bottom of the pit a set of doors stopped them. Unlike the doors on the prefabs this one glowed a harsh, angry red. Garrus stood back, letting Liara take the lead. She crouched down by the door, her Omni-tool glowing orange and bright against the pale metal. It was a matter of seconds for her to hack through the security. The doors screeched and groaned with the sound of long disused hydraulics as they opened to reveal a defunct security checkpoint. Beyond there, the tunnels became a long, dark and glowering stretch into the distance.

"Lights on," he said, pulling out the flashlight attachment for his rifle. "I don't know what's more terrifying. The idea that the Rachni are getting out from somewhere else, or that these ones are smart enough to use the door systems."

"If they are, that suggests they have a queen." Liara's words were leading, edged with her own worries and Garrus nodded tightly. A queen who wasn't as helpful as the one that Shepard had saved.

"What I'm hearing," James said, stepping forward and into the gloom. "Is that it's bad either way and we'd best get a move on before it gets worse."

Glyph's glow spread along the walls as the drone drifted forward, rippling eerily along the rocks and the metal walkway. A few abandoned crates lay here and there, along with discarded guns. They'd only gone maybe fifteen feet along the tunnel when they encountered their first signs of what had happened. A massive bloodstain colored the walkway, discoloring it like rust.

"Drag marks," James said, jerking his gun. "Looks like these bastards got what they deserved."

A little further on a pair of short hallways branched off from their tunnel, terminating at half opened doors. Garrus ducked down the one to the right and shone his flashlight through the gap. In the narrow beam he saw more of the rusted stains of human blood and the sickening glint of shattered bone.

Setting his shoulder against the door, he wrapped his hand around the other half of it and forced it open. The hydraulics wheezed, then gave way, sagging back into the walls. Liara followed after him, Glyph illumination more of the room as they swept it. Massive, empty tubes sat against the walls, reminding him eerily of Grunt's tank. The glass on several was cracked, though one remained full of cloudy liquid. Inside of it, the malformed shape of a Rachni Brood Warrior floated.

The other half of the room was taken up by a cage, the barriers on it still active. Inside, the dried out husk of a dead Brood Warrior sat, eerie, dull, and lifeless.

The other room told the same story when they levered the door open. Garrus' flashlight slid eerily over the empty sockets of a skull, the lower jaw missing as it sat pointedly on the floor near an empty cage. The blood stain spread across the floor toward them, the five-lined mark of dragged human fingers.

Everything was terribly, horridly, quiet and oppressive. The further they ventured on, the more it pressed at them from all sides. Each room they found told the same story, the splinters of bone growing more and more apparent. Here there was a femur, there a rib. Each and every one was stripped bare.

Eventually, they reached the end of the tunnel. The final door gave way to a massive, open space. Their flashlights illuminated the dark screens and tables of a laboratory set up. The center of the cave was cordoned off by immense observation windows. A single walkway lead from the central point of the lab onto a balcony overlooking the center of the containment area.

Liara stepped away, heading toward the bank of terminals while Garrus strode toward the balcony, James at his side. The glass here was broken, the metal ripped asunder and the walkway terminating abruptly while the guardrails went on.

The view from it revealed a very _familiar_ sight in the yawning gloom.

"The hell is that?" James asked, staring.

"That," Garrus drawled, "is a _very_ big Rachni mound."

Quick steps behind them announced Liara's approach. "Goddess," she breathed. "There's more of them. Look!" Down past the mound, past the remains of the fallen and mangled walkway, the walls, floor, even the ceiling, were pitted with mounds like cancerous growths, the tile and metal of the room shorn away to reveal bare rock. "There's no telling how many of them there are, or how widely spread they've become."

This was nothing like the small colonies they'd discovered before. It wasn't even like the mess that they'd gone into for Wrex's scouts.

A shifting, skittering sound echoed up from below them and Garrus took a half step back. "We might," he said, "need a bigger gun."

"Let me see if I can restore power. Everything's online, just dormant due to the shortage." Even as she spoke, words flowing fast and worried, Liara was already heading back to the terminals. "This place might have a self-destruct sequence or, or a specimen cleanse that we can use."

"Make it quick," Garrus bit out. The rustling of untold legs was growing louder and louder. He dropped back quicker, grabbing James to haul him back with him. They fell back behind the broken balcony doorway just as an ocean of Rachni workers came spilling out of the holes alongside more soldiers than he could count. Something truly massive loomed up in the midst of it all, covered by the living mass of the other Rachni.

The heavy thud of assault rifle fire filled the air as the workers came at them in a seething swarm. In the gaps between fire, when they were reloading their thermal clips, they had to step on them before they exploded. Garrus knew they wouldn't be able to hold out against the constant suicide push for long. Particularly not with the more massive soldiers starting to press forward in a horrifying crush.

Just as he was about to give the order to fall back, the lights in the facility flickered and snapped on. A part of him wished they _hadn't_.

"That," James said through grit teeth, "is one _ugly_ bug." He was covered in slime from the Rachni, flesh blistered on his face and neck.

In the middle of the swarm was something that might have been a queen. It only looked superficially like the queen Garrus had seen twice now. Chunks of it seemed to be missing, healed raggedly or still healing. It's head was a hideous mess of scar-tissue and _teeth_ that oddly reminded him of the gaping mouths of thresher maws.

Whatever Cerberus had been up to, they'd created a damned abomination. Again.

"I've got it!" Liara yelled, her steps already thudding across the floor toward them. "They had a neutron purge for the facility like on Noveria. We need to leave. _Now._ "

Garrus swept another round of bullets over the entrance to the balcony, then fell back with James. As soon as the three of them reached the door out of the lab, they turned and ran for it, Sophie barreling after them.

The thunder of legs and bodies slamming into the walls as the shaft curved and twisted was loud behind them. Garrus half turned as he ran to fire a spate of bullets into the crowd following them. Sophie tore past him, her tail tucked as low as her rounded body allowed.

Liara was the first to reach the exit. "Hurry! I'm going to seal the doors."

When he reached the checkpoint, Garrus turned and made a stand. He could hear Liara hissing to herself as she rewrote the encryption on the facilities outer doors. Backing up slowly he kept his grip on the trigger tight, spitting bullets across the mass of Rachni screeching at him.

"Garrus!" she yelled, voice rising in panic.

He turned and dove out through the doors just as they snapped shut, the locking mechanism going red. The sound of several large bodies thudding against it rang out, followed by pained and enraged screeches.

Garrus let James haul him upright and picked his assault rifle up out of the dust. "Let's hope that's the end of that, shall we?"

Glyph whirred down to float before him. "All Rachni within the base have been purged," the drone reported cheerfully. "However I cannot speak for any that may have been outside of the purges range at this time."

"That's great," Garrus drawled. "Come on, we need to let the other's know what we found." He turned away from the facility and nudged the huddling Sophie with his foot. If there was a chance that that _thing_ had escaped the purge, they needed to be ready. "Being unprepared for a horde of pissed off Rachni doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Compadre," James said, wiping ichor off his blistered face with a wince. "You have a damned talent for understatement."

* * *

 **A/N:** I'd like to mention real quick that this story is complete. It's seven chapters long, and I will be posting every Thursday as I have been. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **4**

* * *

"Don't you give me that, you complete _bosh'tet_!" Tali hissed at him, anger in every word and every inch of her body. Garrus scowled right back at her, refusing to back down.

"You're thinking the same thing I am. Don't try to deny it."

They were, the both of them, starting to look thinner than they had before. Tali's suit no longer clung as precisely to her, and well...he probably hid it better. Turians tended to be on the thin and gangling side anyway.

"I'm not telling you to—"

"Hey, what's going on here?" Kaidan's voice broke through the rising sound of Tali's and the both of them turned toward him. Looking at him, Garrus could tell that Kaidan was looking as worn thin and run ragged as he and Tali felt. They'd been trapped on this planet for around half a year now, and cabin fever had long set in. Tempers were thin and strained in between the good times, and right now wasn't one of those.

All of them, down to the ensigns, had lost weight. No one wanted to think about how long their rations would last. Garrus didn't want to think about how the humans would be able to go hunting and foraging for more, but he and Tali were likely to either starve to death, or dare to eat and die from it.

Tiredly, Garrus said, "I told her to take half of my ration." He'd already started to cut himself back.

"And I know for a _fact_ that he hasn't eaten anything else today." Tali glared at him, eyes glowing behind the film of her mask. She hooked her fingers like a claw, like she wanted to punch him or wring his neck. "You can't do this, Garrus!"

He hadn't expected her to notice, but he wasn't surprised that she _had_. Before he could say a word though, Tali rounded on Kaidan like a small storm. Garrus wondered if she'd taken lessons from Shepard in the intimidation department. Kaidan seemed to agree if his half step back was anything to go by.

"And worse!" she hissed. "He said that I should eat some of his rations since I need the strength. Because of how easily my immune system can be compromised." Her words dripped with her infuriation, self-righteous and put out. He hadn't intended for her to take it badly, it was the _truth_. If she wound up dead and he could have prevented it…

"Look, Tali," he said, attempting to keep his tone soothing.

"Don't you Tali me!" She threw her hands in the air, jittering on her feet in a mixture of temper and nerves.

"Whoa," Kaidan cut in, holding his hands up and moving to step between them. His expression had gone grim. "Tali, why don't you go cool off. I'll talk to Garrus, okay?"

She hunched her shoulders and glowered at Garrus and then Kaidan before rocking back on her feet. "Alright. I'll go help Engineer Adams, but this is _not_ finished."

Garrus watched her go, Kaidan lingering beside him. The mess hall was gloomier than it had been since the SR-1. They'd had to shut down all non-essential power, and that meant restricting the normally bright lights as well. The fuel was starting to run low, and it wouldn't be more than a few more months before the ship was running on fumes. Garrus just wondered if he'd live to see it.

Sighing, Garrus turned and packed away the remains of dinner. They couldn't afford to waste it, after all. He heard Kaidan following after him as he made his way over to the small kitchen.

"How bad is it?"

He didn't answer Kaidan's question right away, focusing on his hands. "We have a month's worth of rations if we're lucky," he said finally. "I've cut back to eating one meal a day. Tali's been eating two." And now that she knew for certain how much he'd cut back, he was pretty sure she'd be joining him. They were both doing everything they could to stretch what they had.

Quietly, Kaidan cursed. "How long have you been eating one a day?"

Garrus contemplated lying, but… "Just over two weeks."

A thump sounded, and Garrus turned to see Kaidan had slapped his fist down on the countertop. His other hand ran through his messy hair. "I want you two to start reporting to the medbay for regular check ups. I'm sure Chakwas can give you something… Fluids, nourishment pills."

Leaning back against the stove, Garrus considered Kaidan for a long moment. "Can we really afford to waste medical supplies like that?"

"It's not a _waste_ , Garrus," Kaidan said. He looked so utterly vehement with stubble dusting his jawline and the shadows growing under his eyes. Garrus found himself sharply reminded of Shepard in those last weeks of the war. She'd been falling apart at the seams, the weight of the galaxy bearing down on her. Kaidan may not have been trying to save the entire galaxy, but he was trying to save _their_ small galaxy.

"It's not a waste," he said again. "We need the two of you around."

How could Garrus argue with that? "Alright." It was easier, he'd learned, to surrender when humans got that _look_ about them.

Kaidan gave him a jerky nod and pushed away from the counter. "I'll go have a word with Tali too."

Right. Tali. "I appreciate it." Garrus stepped away from the stove and around into the rest of the mess. He paused, looking at Kaidan for another long moment. "Did you just come down here to break up our little spat or was there something else?"

"Ensign Copeland broke a leg during a skirmish with a Rachni patrol this morning. I was wondering if you could handle his shift and yours," Kaidan said, posture slowly relaxing.

Garrus shot a glance toward the med-bay. The lights inside were dim, but he could make out Chakwas and a figure resting on one of the beds. "I can do that."

Kaidan nodded at him once more, then turned and left. Looking after him for a moment Garrus breathed out a sigh and ran his hand back over his forehead and fringe. Gathering himself, he wandered over to the med-bay and stepped inside.

"Garrus," Chakwas murmured in greeting, head dipping briefly. She spun her chair around to face him. On the bed, Copeland stirred and pushed himself up.

Wandering over to Copeland Garrus peered down at him. His visor gave him a succinct read-out of the injuries he'd sustained. Broken leg, scattered bruising, and a laceration just beneath one eye. It could have been a whole lot worse. They'd lost two of the navigator's to pissed off Rachni last week. "I hope the other guy looks worse," Garrus drawled.

"Heh, I made sure the other guy ate a pistol shot in the face," Copeland offered, grinning.

"Good. Next thing you know you'll be telling stories about this in the lounge."

"Soon as we get off this rock, at least."

"May well be tomorrow, Copeland," Garrus said, and turned toward Chakwas. They'd all said that line more times than they could count. No one really believed it—platitudes got old after awhile, but they were better than nothing sometimes.

Standing, Chakwas said, "I assume you had something you needed to discuss, Garrus. Shall we step back out and let my patient rest?"

Garrus tipped his head for her to proceed him, gave Copeland a quick salute, and followed after her. Humming to himself, Garrus asked, "The broken leg the worst of it?"

Chakwas strode across the mess to the kitchen and set about the coffeemaker. He'd heard the crewmen complaining more than once about how _thin_ they had to make it. Before long, it would be gone entirely. Sighing, Chakwas pressed her hands against the countertop and listened to the percolator run. "Who would have thought we'd go from the Reapers to our own private war of attrition against maddened Rachni?"

"It could be worse," he drawled in response. "It could be Reapers _and_ maddened Rachni."

Chakwas sputtered out a tired laugh and shot him a look meant to quell, though her smile said otherwise. "Anyway, what did you need?"

"Kaidan wanted me to check in with you. Something about getting nutritional supplements." He tried to keep it light, to keep the harsh reality of it on the down low but the way Chakwas expression collapsed he knew he'd failed.

"I was wondering when this would happen." She sighed again, looking haggard and worn as thin as the rest of them. Her hands clamped convulsively on her empty mug. "I have a small stockpile set aside. Not as much as I wish I did… I traded most of our malnutrition treatments for more military grade medi-gel." She turned then to look at him, shoulders straight, expression pinched, and chin up. "How long until the rest of the crew start needing them as well?"

It was Garrus who looked away first. He'd never thought he would have to deliver news to a doctor like this—that the people she tried her best to keep healthy might well die slowly as she watched. "A month, maybe two at a stretch."

Chakwas face crumpled for a moment, then wiped clean. "I'll take inventory of everything I have again in preparation. If our rations are getting that low then we're going to need every little bit."

If he hadn't already been fond of humans after the years he'd spent working with them on the _Normandy_ , this little episode on crash landings would have been eye opening. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Just for you to do your best to stay healthy," she said, voice adamant and reply quick as lightning. "Shepard would never forgive me if I let you and Tali die out here, let alone the rest of her crew." Her smile was brittle but genuine, and Garrus did his best to give her one right back. While some of the crew may have preferred to think of Shepard as dead...some of them refused to give up the little bit of hope they had. Garrus was glad that he wasn't alone in that.

The coffeemaker beeped and Chakwas turned to fill her mug with what amounted to lukewarm, flavored water. She stepped over toward him and, for a long moment, she looked up at him, then reached out to lay a hand on his arm. "Thank you, Garrus, for being honest with me."

The lines around her eyes and mouth were deeper than he could ever remember, but there was that same subtle strength to her that Shepard had, that Kaidan and Joker and all the other humans wore. He respected that in ways he couldn't express—ways that his own people understood well.

"Of course," he said. Like so few of them, Chakwas had been there from the start of this mess. She'd put his face back together and patched him up more times than he cared to count. "Talk to you later, Doc."

Inclining her head with all the dignity of an Asari matriarch, Chakwas headed back to her domain and Garrus was left standing alone in the dim mess once more.

* * *

"Did I ever tell you about the time we scouted out a crew that had been shipwrecked for _10 years_?" Garrus asked. The problem with their low power state was that he had nothing to really keep busy with outside of the mundane. Maintaining weapons, taking inventory, eating, sleeping...checking on Shepard's pets and wondering how long he could keep them alive. He'd already had to remove a handful of dead fish the day before.

 _"No, I don't believe you did,"_ Liara said, voice emanating from the battery's comm. Garrus paused in sharpening the ceremonial talon he'd pulled out of his things. It had been a gift from his father when the Primarch had allowed Garrus his Reaper Taskforce.

If they ran out of thermal clips, he was going to be damned ready to take things on at close range. "It was crazy," he said idly, remembering the horror story they'd walked in on. Jacob's father had been a disgusting madman. To this day, Garrus was amazed that Shepard hadn't stopped him with a bullet in the head. Somehow she'd kept her composure until they were back on the _Normandy_. If it had been him, Garrus would have force fed him into a state of neural decay and left him there. "A real nightmare. Taylor's father had the whole crew eating the food there—it caused neural decay. Turned the women into his personal harem and tossed out dissenters. The men at least."

Liara made a disgusted noise. _"That's_ awful _."_

"Mmmm." Lifting the talon, Garrus studied it for a moment, laying it along his palm. It was a fine, lethal piece of work. Even a ceremonial weapon was made to be used as a weapon when it came to Turians. "I wonder, sometimes, how they didn't go mad before the neural decay set in," he admitted quietly. "Being stuck here…"

 _"Day after day, with no information, no way of knowing if anyone but us still exists out there. It's…"_

"You've got that right." She didn't need to say what it _was_ for him to know. Breathing out a huff, Garrus sheathed the talon and set it aside. He shifted, his small cot in the battery creaking. "I should get some rest. I have another double shift on watch early tomorrow."

 _"Copeland still out?"_ Liara asked, worry tinging her tone.

"For a few more days at least."

 _"Alright. Rest well, Garrus."_

"You too."

He heard the faint sound the intercom shutting down and turned to get comfortable on the cot. He'd taken to sleeping here again. Without Shepard in that bed with him it felt like ghosts haunted his dreams, left him restless and unable to sleep well. Not that his slumber had been particularly restful for a long while anyway…

Settling back, Garrus picked up the datapad he kept beside the cot and thumbed through it. He knew the information by heart by now. It was all the statistics that Liara had managed to glean from the abandoned Cerberus facility. All the information on how they'd had tissue from the Rachni Queen on Noveria and were attempting to _clone_ her so they could produce more Rachni, better Rachni.

It was an awful meeting of their aspirations of building super-soldiers and their initiative to make Rachni their cannon fodder. Garrus had taken to reading it nearly every night, hoping that it would finally reveal some clue as to how he could locate the beast they'd seen down in that hole. Somehow, he couldn't shake the notion that it may have survived. As Kaidan had put it they were better safe than sorry by preparing for the worst.

Subsequent trips to the facility had revealed it abandoned by the Rachni now as well, though at least they'd been able to raid it for supplies.

Somewhere between his second re-read of the night, Garrus fell asleep.

A few hours later he was startled awake, though he wasn't sure by _what_. His stomach complained as it always did, hunger gnawing at his insides. The sound of thunder rumbling near constantly overhead made it through the _Normandy's_ bulkheads, no longer hidden by sound dampening and the thrum of her engines. Garrus listened, straining to hear more beyond the patter of rain being whipped against the side of the ship.

Then the entire ship gave a _shudder_ , and Garrus bolted to his feet in surprise. He'd taken no more than a single step toward the door when the room lurched, his stomach going with it, and the rest of his body following. His hand caught on the railing alongside the thanix cannons, keeping him upright. Not for long though, the entire world seemed to pull hard to the right a grinding, scraping sound cutting through the air and into his bones.

Another violent shift happened, yanking his feet right out from under him. Lights blossomed behind his eyes as the side of his head smacked against the top of the thanix. Beside him, the datapad he'd been reading was slung to the floor and slid toward the front of the ship.

For a moment, he thought they'd regained power, that they were lifting off. A feeling of weightlessness hit him, and then he was yanked back so forcefully that he was certain his shoulder was going to pop from the socket.

The _Normandy_ groaned around him, an unsettling sound he'd never heard before. Garrus registered the sound of alarm klaxons over the dull ringing in his aching head. Groaning softly, he attempted to haul himself to his feet only for the world to tilt again. He'd barely regained his feet when he was thrown back again. His back slammed into the railing at the back of the walkway, a jarring pain going up his spine as the terrifying sound of screeching and groaning rose in a deafening crescendo.

It struck him, suddenly, as the room listed to the side, his belongings scattering across the floor like toys, that the _Normandy_ was sliding, falling. He could hear the sound of people yelling, screaming in fear. Reaching for the railing, he again tried to right himself but something _massive_ slammed against the _Normandy's_ hull and the ship careened sideways. He was tossed into the wall, his shoulder jarring painfully enough to rip a gasp out of him.

Like a gunshot, a massive piece of splintered wood, big as the thanix cannons, breached the hull above hm. Sucking in a shocked breath, Garrus ducked down and clutched his hands over his head. There was another loud, cracking pop as the entire ship lurched and turned further, the sound of wood breaking.

By the time everything came to a shuddering stop and stillness settled over the ship again, he had no idea how long he'd been huddled there. A part of him barely dared to breathe, let alone move. Slowly, he lifted his head, bits of bark and tree pulp sliding off his shoulders and sticking in his cowl. Garrus looked up, past the twisted metal where the tree trunk had speared through. Wires swayed and crackled overhead, sending showers of sparks spitting down. He could clearly hear the sound of water dripping through the hole torn in the hull.

Something clattered outside the battery's door, and then a fist thudded against it. "Garrus?" Liara's panicked voice was just about the best thing he'd ever heard.

"Here and alive," he croaked, shaken. Edging out from under the trunk he grabbed for the railing, staggered upright, and used it to balance himself. In the dim, flickering lighting he saw the door light up green, then orange, red, then green again before opening partially. Glowing with her biotics, Liara's hands poked through the small gap and forced the door open the rest of the way. She stumbled in, blood running down the right side of her face.

Bracing herself against the cannon's console, she looked around dazedly before sighting him...and the trunk that had ripped through the ship's armor. " _Goddess!_ Garrus, are you alright?"

His head was pounding, and he felt like vomiting up what little he'd eaten recently but over all? "Fine," he rasped. "Been better, but fine. You?"

"About the same." She blinked repeatedly, then reached up to clear blood from her eye. Garrus took the chance to pick his way toward her.

"Funniest thing," he said. "This ship survives the Collectors and the Reapers, but a massive tree trunk manages to go through her."

Liara choked out a laugh and extended her hand toward him, helping him keep steady as he stepped over a pile of debris. "Gravity is a tough enemy," she said gravely.

Together, they staggered back out of the forward battery. The mess hall was a disaster, the lights flickering on and off. The trays from the mess lay scattered across the floor in all directions, and the only reason the tables and chairs were where they belonged was because they were attached to the floor. Shattered fragments of glass glittered all across the floor like shrapnel. Several members of the crew were strewn about like cast-off clothes, groaning. Chakwas was already hovering around them, checking for injuries.

The two of them picked their way past their crewmates toward the memorial and the elevator. Liara gave the door a tap, then shook her head. "No good. Until the powers back online…" She trailed off, and Garrus huffed out an understanding sigh.

"Through the ducts then?"

Liara grimaced and nodded. "We can at least get down to engineering, and from there maybe to the shuttle bay."

"Right."

They passed back through the crew deck, into the med-bay, and to the AI Core beyond it. Garrus pried the hatch open, and Liara slithered down it first. Grimacing once more, Garrus clambered down the ladder after her. While Liara was lithe and perfectly suited to moving through air ducts and vents he wasn't so lucky.

When he saw Shepard again he was going to say _"Shepard, sweetheart, love of my life, I need to work on my flexibility."_ and it would be _the worst_ pick-up line she'd ever heard. He'd do it just to get her back for the way she'd propositioned him that first time.

Looking back on it, he still wasn't sure how he hadn't swallowed his tongue entirely.

" _Ow!_ " He snarled, his already sore head banging against a pipe. Ahead of him a light flickered on as Liara pulled out a flashlight. She was crouched there as easily as if she were taking cover from enemy fire. Her smile was small and mischievous as she glanced back at him, blue skin still stained with her blood.

"Careful," she said, airy voice tinged with amusement, "the ceilings here are a little low."

"I noticed," he grumbled, watching her crawl off ahead of him like a pyjak. In comparison he felt like a damned elcor bumbling after her.

When Liara's bobbing light caught on the rungs of a ladder, she scaled it quickly and hefted the hatch off the top. Garrus followed her up, hauling himself out into the Engineering level's dark hold. The boxes and crates of set aside equipment were strewn around in a ramshackle mess, and they both froze when the ship gave a low moan that vibrated beneath their feet.

"I...don't like the sound of that," Liara murmured, glancing back at him with wide eyes.

Grimly, Garrus nodded toward the stairs. "Let's keep moving."

Liara went first, her flashlight sweeping up the corridor ahead of them. Just as they reached the door that would let them out into the corridor between the holds, it rushed open. Liara reeled back with a surprised gasp, then huffed as her flashlight illuminated Javik's scowling face. He lifted his hand to ward off the light from his four, blinking eyes.

"Javik!" Liara hissed. "You startled me."

"I noticed." He glanced between the two of them, then jerked his head to indicate they follow him, and stepped back. "I was on my way to see what all the noise was about." His scowl deepened for a moment, and Garrus noticed that there was water dripping from his legs, leaving a trail of puddles that gleamed in Liara's flashlight. "And demand someone bring me towels."

"We were doing the same thing," Liara said, "Ah, well, not the towels part…"

"Obviously."

Garrus hummed low in his throat before the two could start sniping at each other. "I'll just go see if Tali's down here too, shall I?" he asked blandly. "If anyone will know how to get down to the shuttle bay, or up to the CIC it'll be her."

Liara started, and turned toward him blinking owlishly. "Oh, yes! Of course. I'll go make sure the reporter is alright as well."

There was enough light from Liara's flashlight that he was able to make it to the door into the drive core before it faded down the hall. He could hear Javik following after her, each step spattering slightly on the floor. Inside the drive core proper, the darkness closed in lit only by low, flickering emergency lights.

"Tali?" he called, squinting in the darkness. With the colors of her suit, she was hard to spot in gloom like this.

"Over here." At least she didn't _sound_ hurt. Garrus picked his way toward where her voice had come from, and found her kneeling before the central console for the drive core. Her omni-tool whirred, throwing off a faint circle of orange light. "I'm trying to get the power up and running again."

The frustration in her voice made him wince. She'd taken it as a personal insult that she hadn't been able to repair the _Normandy_ or get EDI back online. He stepped over to her and crouched down. "Any luck?"

"I think I can get it, though it would be easier with the team here." She shook her head, exasperated.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the door opened and Adams, Daniels, and Donnelly spilled in. Garrus squinted at them in the dimness. They looked fine, tired eyed and sporting a few new bruises and cuts but otherwise unhurt. Donnelly hadn't even put a shirt on.

"I'll get on down into the maintenance ducts," Donnelly said, accent a thicker burr from sleep as he shoved past them. His bare feet slapped against the walkway. "That ride we just took probably threw out the links between capacitors and—" Garrus lost whatever he was saying as he yanked a hatch open and fairly toppled into it.

Adams came over to stand on Tali's other side. "What's the damage, Tali?"

"Pretty bad," she reported, omni-tool still whirring. She reached for it, typed a few lines, and waited. "But we should be able to get the power functional. At best we're looking at fifty percent of our current functionality, though."

Adams' winced. "Yeah, that's bad. Alright, Vakarian shove over and let me see what I can do to help."

Without a word, Garrus stepped out of the way and let them do what they did best. From somewhere under his feet, Donnelly hollered, "This ship can take as much of a beating as her captain and still come out looking damn fine."

Groaning quietly, Daniels crouched beside her work station and pulled a panel off the wall. "Shut up, Kenneth."

Between the four of them, it wasn't long before the lights flickered weakly on, the ship humming quietly as if she'd taken in a sudden breath. Garrus turned away and left the engineering team shouting back and forth to each other. As he stepped out into the corridor again, Garrus resigned himself to waiting morosely for the elevator to come back online. He wasn't sure he wanted to brave engineering again right now.

Near the elevator, both Liara and Javik were already waiting for him. The panel on the door glowed a fitful green and flickered out occasionally before holding steady. Liara nodded at it, eyes on him. "Shall we?"

With a disgruntled snort, Javik slapped his palm against the button and stalked into the elevator the movement it arrived. With a shrug, Garrus followed after him with Liara a half-step behind. The ride down was quiet, neither Garrus nor Liara willing to speak up and bring on the irritable wrath of the Prothean shaped stormcloud occupying the space with them. When the door opened, Javik stalked out into the shuttle bay ahead of them. The crates of supplies hadn't moved much thanks to the straps harnessing them in position, though one of the shuttles had listed slightly to jam against the door. A spray of weapon mods lay jammed under the terminals, and any number of stray bottles and tools had escaped.

With a quiet clatter, Sophie came skulking over to meet them.

Joker's voice echoed over the intercom, staticy and irritated, _"Hey, is this thing on? Oh, look, it is. That's great."_

"Joker," Garrus said, leaning down to give Sophie a pat. "Everything alright?"

 _"Just peachy. My ship is grounded and in ribbons, I mean never better, really. How could I be?_ And! _And I think I only broke half of my bones during that whole episode. I must be getting better at this!"_

Further down the shuttle bay, Liara had reached the hangar door. Tentatively, she reached up to push the button to open it. Their last position had left it wedged on rock if it opened too far, but now it swung slowly out and downward, creaking and moaning as if the pneumatic joints were going out. Beyond them the world fell away in a stomach turning drop, half concealed by massive leaves and branches. The ground looked very, very far away.

"On the bright side," Garrus drawled, heading over to join Liara and Javik, "we could get the shuttles out. You know, if we hadn't already drained their cores to help power the _Normandy_."

 _"Hate to break it to you,"_ Joker said, his voice light and terse, _"but you have an awful view of the_ bright side _."_

"It _is_ a nice view?" Liara offered.

 _"Ugh, not you too, Liara!"_

* * *

Here Garrus had thought he'd been through the worst the universe had to offer. C-Sec, disappointing his father, Saren, Omega, the Collectors and the Reapers had _nothing_ on the daunting task of using mag boots while on a planet's surface. Normally they were used when someone needed to walk on the outside hull of a ship. In space. With no gravity.

With a grunt of effort, Garrus wrenched his foot up and took a step further back along the _Normandy's_ wing, hauling the massive vine with him. James, further up along the vine, mimicked him and together they hauled it slowly back then slung it down along the wing. Hanging from the bottom of said wing, Kaidan caught it and he and Liara began the process of hauling it back so they could loop it around and secure it.

None of them were willing to take a chance on the _Normandy_ toppling from her new, even more precarious perch.

They'd ended up caught in the boles and branches of several massive trees. So many trees had been uprooted and torn asunder by the ship's descent that they'd become wedged here, nearly within the canopy of the gargantuan forest.

Garrus made the laborious trek back to the other side of the wing, and caught the vine as Liara passed it back up to him. "You doing alright down there?" he drawled, the tones of his voice humming with amusement.

"I'm starting to get a headache again already," Liara snapped, then let out a huff. "If we weren't the only ones who could do this…."

"I'd do it," he offered dryly, tossing the end of the vine to James, "but I don't have biotics to soften the fall if I slip."

He could almost _hear_ the scowl in her reply. "Don't rub it in."

"Come on," he said, leaning forward and holding his hand down to her, "we can afford to take another break."

Liara gave a little huff, but grabbed his hand nonetheless. He heard the sound of her boots disengaging before she swung up, using her biotics to give herself the slightest boost she needed. She landed beside him, stood up, and swayed her hand going to her head immediately. "Oooh, I feel like I just mind melded with Shepard again."

Garrus laughed, unable to stop himself. "So...dealing with her ship is as rough and prone to trouble as she is?"

 _That_ got him a faint smile. "Yes, of course it is. _Of course_ it is."

James helped Kaidan up to land beside her, his brows knit tight and his jaw clenched. He pressed his fingertips to his temples and rubbed for a moment. "Yeah, a break sounds great right about now."

Easing himself into a seated position, Garrus turned his own boots off and settled back to relax. From here, the rest of the valley spread out before them in a roiling sea of treetops. Brilliant, massive, multi-colored birds flew up into the air, the sunlight catching on their feathers before they wheeled and dove again.

It was humid, uncomfortably so, but there was a slight breeze that made the various tarps covering the breaches in the _Normandy's_ hull flap. Liara shifted and sat gently down beside him, following his gaze to look out at the view.

"It truly _is_ a nice view," she said.

For awhile, they sat there in silence staring out over the planet that had become their prison for so many months. It was at times like this that Garrus could almost forget the constant, gnawing hunger. That, he suspected, wasn't a good thing. Once he stopped _feeling_ the hunger pangs, he was going to be in trouble.

 _"Hey guys?"_ Joker called over their comms. There was _something_ in Joker's voice, something that Garrus couldn't quite place. _"You really ought to hear this."_

Heaving a faint sigh, Kaidan said, "Patch it through, Joker."

Suddenly, staticy and warped, an unfamiliar voice played in Garrus' ear. _"Normand—we've gett-your distr-nal."_

Immediately, Garrus was up and scrabbling along the top of the ship, half before he even regained his feet. When he did, it was full out, pelting run. The others were right there with him, the taste of _hope_ searing and white hot in his mouth. He swung down off the roof of the ship and landed in the open airlock, ignoring the sound of the others clattering after him.

"Joker!" he yelled, grabbing the doorframe of the interior airlock. He hurled himself into the cockpit. Traynor was sitting in the co-pilots seat, both of them flicking their fingers as they worked.

"Working on it," Joker snapped.

"There!" Traynor said, "I've got it! Isolating the signal now, adding something to clean it up a bit and…."

 _"Come in, Normandy. We're picking up your distress signal. Do you read?"_

Kaidan lurched forward, and Joker waved at him to go ahead. "This is Kaidan Alenko with the Normandy. We hear you!"

For a long moment, so long that Garrus was already feeling the disappointment, no response came. Then a smooth voice—human, he thought—replied, _"Hey there, Normandy. This is the Argent. How can we help?"_

Time seemed to stand still. There was someone out there, someone on the other end of that transmission. They were no longer alone in the galaxy with no hope of being found. Garrus looked from one shell-shocked face to another, seeing his own relief and desperate hope reflected back at him several times over.

Swallowing hard, Kaidan made a few false starts to speak. "We, uh, we've been shipwrecked down here for around half a standard Earth year. Any way you can give us an evac?"

 _"How big is your crew? We're only a small research vessel."_ Human, definitely, and male.

"There's about twenty of us all told."

Garrus' stomach was knotted up, his lungs and heart in his throat. There was quiet again, then the same voice replied, _"Too many for us. How long can you hold out down there? Do you have anyone who needs immediate evac?"_

Before it even happened, Garrus _knew_ what must have been crossing Kaidan's mind. He turned to look at him just as Kaidan glanced over at him. Garrus threw his shoulders back, his head coming up. He shook his head firmly. If Kaidan thought he was going to get Garrus to walk out there and leave them all behind he had another thing coming.

Quietly, so the transmission wouldn't pick him up, Garrus said, "You can offer it to Tali, but I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I," Tali said from somewhere behind him. When she'd gotten there he had no idea. They glanced back at her. She was mirroring his pose, arms clasped behind her back and every bit the Admiral she was. "We all leave or none of us leave."

Garrus smiled slightly at her. No one left behind. The crew of the _Normandy_ was family.

Kaidan sighed, pressing his fingers against his eyes. Finally, he said, "No, but...on the off chance you have dextro-amino based medical supplies and rations we could use them. We have a turian and a quarian on board."

From the transmission there came a faint scuffing and the sound of muffled speaking. In the background a female voice snapped a dissenting ' _fuck that!'_ and another, older, female voice hushed her. This time, a new voice entirely spoke up. _"Sure thing, we can do that."_ The flanging tone gave away one of his own kind, a turian with the dialect of the Hierarchy's outer colonies.

 _"Caidus,"_ the human voice said, _"are you sure about that? What if you don't have enough to last you?"_

 _"I'll be fine, Vic,"_ the turian—Caidus—said. _"They damned well seem to need'em more than I do."_

With a sigh, the human said, _"We'll drop a pod with supplies for you. What coordinates would be best? We can head back into comm range and send a message for aid as soon as possible."_

"Thank you," Kaidan croaked. "We're with the Alliance Military. Let them know."

 _"Will do, Normandy. You lot hang in there."_

Maybe, just maybe, Garrus thought, they might get out of this alive after all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **5**

* * *

Craning his head back, Garrus watched the pod drop in a bright burst of light, like a shooting star. Over the ridge it deployed its automatic thrusters to slow its descent and disappeared from view behind the canopy. Crouching down on the _Normandy's_ wing, he hopped to the slope of one massive tree trunk. The bark sheared away beneath his boots as he slid down a few feet before grabbing onto a vine. Below him, among the roots of the tree, Tali and Javik waited.

He picked his way down the slope, gripping at leaves and branches to keep himself steady. The last several feet had him throwing his arms out for balance and walking freely on his own until he could jump from the trunk into the tangle of large, looping roots.

Landing lightly beside the two, Garrus nodded into the thick tangle of trees and ferns around them. "Let's go get that supply drop."

Tali slithered off her perch, landing lightly on the ground beside him. She bounced on her toes a moment, before starting forward. Garrus followed her, leaving Javik to bring up the rear, particle rifle in hand.

Javik made a quiet noise. "We are being observed."

"Of _course_ we are." Huffing out a breath, Garrus slid his assault rifle off his back and primed it. "Heads up and eyes peeled for trouble." There was a faint click as Tali pulled out her shotgun, and then they were quiet as they pushed through the thick undergrowth. Thin trickles of raindrops fell down, slithering between broken branches and bent twigs. The _Normandy_ had cut a line down the slope of the ridge from her original position, losing a few pieces along the way. Garrus could see the bright glint of shorn away armor that had been roughly scraped off, stuck to trees like flags.

Ahead of him, Tali ducked down to swing under the trunk of a tree, laid out at a near forty-five degree angle. He crouched down to follow after her, when Javik grabbed his shoulder. Looking back and up, he took in the curl of Javik's upper lip and his intent stare. Following his line of sight, Garrus adjusted his visor, scanning checking… He layered the chemical signature of the Rachni in just in case, and there...sure enough.

"Rachni," Javik spat. "They are stalking us."

"Just one," Garrus rumbled, tracking the soldiers movements through the trees. "A scout." In a single fluid motion he swapped his assault rifle for the sniper, and pressed the slider on it that would give his rounds that little extra armor-piercing hit. Effortlessly, he sighted from where he was crouched, found his target, and fired. The Rachni soldier didn't even screech as it crumpled, brains splattered against the root system behind it.

Javik gave an approving sound, and ducked past Garrus and under the fallen tree. "At least that will keep them off us for a little while longer. We should hurry."

Humming an affirmative, Garrus followed after him. "I wouldn't be surprised if they caught the fuss with the supply drop and came looking."

"They are smart," Javik said, glancing sidelong at him. Garrus cradled his sniper rifle in arms that felt too thin inside his hardsuit. "But not like the other Rachni we have encountered."

"No," Garrus said in wary agreement. He'd noticed it as well. These Rachni had an animal cunning that the others of the race didn't exhibit. These weren't the kind of Rachni that built advanced ships and weapons.

Ahead of them, Tali scrabbled up a small rockslide, and paused to wait for them. She tilted her head back, considering the sky. Garrus glanced over at her as he stepped up beside her, Javik picking his way up at the rear. She'd been quiet, subdued, since their contact with the _Argent_. In fact, it had probably been longer than that. It had been her own insistence that she come along, but he wondered if he'd made the right call in letting her.

Javik took the lead and they let him, Garrus falling into step with Tali's shorter legs. He watched her from the corner of his eye. She had that hunched posture about her that said something was weighing on her mind. Looking ahead again, Garrus asked, "What's wrong?"

"Do you think we made the right choice?" Her voice was quiet, cast low as if she were confiding in him, and Garrus came to a halt. Tali stopped alongside him, head tilting up to look at him. He could _almost_ make out the silhouette of her features.

"About what?"

She looked away again, looking after Javik who'd kept on going a little further up the incline before stopping to wait for them. "About staying. You could have gone to look for Shepard, and I could have gotten back to the Fleet—to Rannoch." Tali moved as if to wring her hands together, but the shotgun she was clutching got in the way. She sighed out her frustration. "It feels like I'm shirking my responsibility."

Garrus clenched his teeth together, the hollow pang in his stomach reminding him of his creeping mortality. He reached up and rubbed at the side of his neck, pulled taught over the tendons and bones beneath. "Shepard would never forgive me if I abandoned the crew," he said at last. "The _Normandy_ and everyone on it. Mmm, you're all family." He barked out a laugh, looking back down the mess of fallen trees. The _Normandy_ glinted among the leafy berth she'd become stuck in. "That's home down there, as for the Fleet…"

Looking back at Tali, he leveled her an even stare and gave her a cocksure smile. "I think they'd understand, Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_."

Her shoulders hunched once more, though this time with breathless laughter that bordered a little on the hysterical side and he found himself joining her after a moment. Tali tilted her head back up at him again as their laughing fit wheezed to a halt. He knew she was smiling at him even if he couldn't see it. "I guess you're right."

"Of _course_ I am, now let's get going before Javik threatens to throw us _primitives_ out the airlock," Garrus drawled, jerking his head toward their comrade. "Mind you, we wouldn't go _far_ but still…"

"Don't want to risk it," Tali said in a stage whisper. Garrus huffed out another quiet laugh, the toes of his boots digging into the soft soil as they made their way up. Tali, in her lighter gear, barely left a mark in the leaf mulch.

The hike to where the supply pod had landed took them to the _Normandy's_ original resting place first. Overall, it was a couple of miles uphill, but it wasn't the distance that brought Garrus to a halt. He lifted one hand to stop the other two in their tracks.

"Hold up, I want to have a look around here."

"What is it?" Tali asked sharply. She knew him well enough by now to know when he'd caught the scent of something.

Garrus strode forward, steps careful and even paced as if he were approaching a live bomb. The ground where the _Normandy_ once rested had long since lost its covering of sharp-edged ridge grass. The exposed dirt was disrupted, churned up and muddied. It very well could have been the rain slowly washing the rocks and dirt out from under the ship's hull as they'd speculated, but…

"Look," he said, "there." Jerking his rifle forward, Garrus swept the barrel before him to indicated the deep cut in the ground where the _Normandy's_ nose had dug in during their initial crash. He paced over to the edge of it and crouched down. "Something big took a chunk out of the ground."

Tali was at his shoulder in a moment, Javik flanking her. Together, they gazed down at the disrupted ground. The rocks that the ship's nose had been jammed up against were gone. Garrus could see them further down the slope, wedged against the fall of several large trees. The ground further along the drag had been shoved upward into an all too familiar mound formation.

"The Rachni," Javik spat, all four eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "They are cunning indeed."

"I don't like this," Garrus murmured, voice pitched so low it was nearly lost to the flanging.

Tali's hand came to rest on the curve of his shoulder. "Me either."

Garrus straightened up and turned to look further up the ridge. "The pod should be within a half-mile radius of the distress beacon," he said. "We need to get there and then get back to the ship."

They moved out at a jog, heading further up along the rocky promontory toward where Kaidan and James had deployed the beacon so many months ago.

"My scans are picking up a low-key signal to the east of the beacon," Tali said, adjusting her course. Her Omni-tool glowed bright. Garrus and Javik followed after her, boots slipping in the mud.

The pod was resting at a slight angle, half on a large boulder. Garrus strode up to it and grabbed the handle on one side to haul it down onto flat ground, disturbing the rain damp grass and ferns. Tali crouched before it, her shotgun tucked away and both hands going to work to crack the pod open. Garrus watched her for a second, before turning to join Javik.

"See anything?"

Javik shook his head, gaze scanning the tree line to the east and the rocks to the west. Garrus tapped his visor, bringing up the layer of sensors. Down south of them, the area where the _Normandy_ had once sat glowed bright with the Rachni's chemical signature. The flicker of bodies glowing in his IR scanners had him turning his head, tracking their progress. When they lifted off, flying up into the tops of the trees he looked away again.

Behind him, he heard the pneumatic locks on the pod give way. "Got it!" Tali chirped, and Garrus turned to help her offload the supplies while Javik kept watch. He yanked the small canisters and crates out, letting Tali cracked them open and began slipping the smaller packets inside into the multitude of pockets hidden on her suit. He did the same, shoving medi-gel packages into spare ammo packs alongside his thermal clips and Shepard's nameplate.

Between them, they each grabbed the last small crates, leaving one hand for their guns. "Move out," Garrus said, nodding to Javik to take point. They set out at a lope, heading downhill as quickly and as safely as they could.

The feeling that they were being watched never quite let up.

* * *

"You're telling me that the _Rachni_ threw us down a mountain?" Kaidan asked. Garrus watched him pace along the far side of the conference table. They'd long since offloaded the supplies to Chakwas and the rest of the crew to be sorted, inventoried, and stored.

"It's more of a _ridge_ ," Garrus drawled, leaning back against the glass wall and crossing his arms, "but yes. That's what I'm saying."

Liara nodded, mouth set in a thoughtful line. "It does make a certain amount of sense."

"Hell, yeah it does." James scoffed, following Kaidan's pacing with a sharp-eyed stare. "I mean, we went out there and kicked the hornet's nest. We knew if any of them survived they wouldn't be done with us."

Javik slammed his hands down atop the conference table, making Tali start and drawing all attention to him. "This is what you are focusing on?" he spat, eyes narrowed at them. He straightened up, shoulders back and spine stiff. Javik was every bit the commander he had been among his people. "There is a more pressing concern here. If these Rachni went to such lengths once, then they are not finished with us."

If nothing else, Garrus could respect Javik's military mind and bearing. That didn't mean his personality wasn't still insufferable most of the time. He pushed off the wall and moved toward the table. "We all know what's at stake here," he said, nodding at Javik. "He's got a point though. We don't have our perimeter sensors anymore, and we're stuck up a damned tree."

Or five, or however many trees had come to lean together to make their new home. Javik gave him that narrow, stern look then nodded and stepped back from the table.

"We'll have to be even more careful now," Kaidan agreed quietly. Garrus looked around at them, from face to face. All of them were worn and tired; Liara's cheeks were growing gaunt, the humans had dark circles beneath their eyes, Javik's scowl was more pronounced, and Tali's suit hung off of her like it was three sizes too big.

It made his chest ache and his stomach turn. They'd all been through so much and the idea that _this_ could be where they ended… "We just have to hold out a little longer," he said, keeping his tone light and cocksure. "We've made contact, and soon enough there'll be a rescue operation underway to get us out of here. Forget the fact that we're some of the galaxy's biggest names...the Alliance will want it's best ship back."

Liara gave a soft laugh, bowing her head over the table and the datapad she had resting on it. "That's true. I bet Feron's had my best people looking for us for awhile now." She looked back up at them, bright eyed despite the healing cut on her brow. "We've all been through worse than this."

"And," Tali said, "come out the other side in the end."

"Exactly," Garrus drawled, self-satisfied. "What's one more time?"

"Let them come." That, Garrus knew, was Javik's form of agreement. "They will find us a hard enemy to conquer."

There it was, the fire he'd come to know in each of them. The very spirit of the _Normandy_ shining through. Garrus might not have been the religious sort by his people's standards. He was never sure if the Spirits existed, but right now he sent a silent thank you to the Spirit of the _Normandy,_ that it was still thriving, giving them the strength they needed.

Across the table, Kaidan huffed out a laugh. "Right. We've got a lot of work to do then." Garrus turned to leave as the others trooped out, but came up short as Kaidan called out to him. "Garrus, wait. Can I have a word?"

Stepping back, Garrus let Liara and Tali slip past him. He leaned back against the wall, looking along the table at Kaidan. The door to the CIC hissed closed behind the last of their friends, and Kaidan rested his clenched fists against the top of the table. His knuckles had gone white.

"Waiting this out…" he said slowly, and Garrus tipped his head toward him. "How long are we talking about?"

"A month, likely," Garrus said bluntly. "I'll know for certain once the supplies are inventoried." It was his best guess though, judging from the size of the pod and the amount they'd unpacked. Most ships only carried enough supplies to last a good three months out, depending on how much travel by FTL they were planning to do. There was no telling how much of those supplies they'd been given, and how long the _Argent_ had already been traveling. "Split that between Tali and I and even if we're only eating one meal a day…"

It was going to be rough. No matter how he looked at it, they were going to cut it close. The grim look on Kaidan's face said he was looking down the scope of the problem and didn't like what he was seeing.

"And yet, you still found a way to give everyone hope," Kaidan said, humorless. "Shepard's rubbed off on you."

Garrus coughed awkwardly into his fist, his head ducking. "It was bound to happen eventually." Looking away from him, Garrus stared out into the hall toward the defunct war room. How long had they desperately tried to get the QEC working? Letting out a breath, Garrus glanced back at Kaidan. "Kaidan, listen…" The words stuck in his throat, thick and immovable.

"Yeah?" The prompt made Garrus let out another frustrated huff and he ran his hand over his fringe as Kaidan strode around the table toward him.

"Look, if I don't make it out of this…"

Kaidan came to an abrupt stop, mouth pulling into a mulish frown. "Hey, let's not go the—"

"Just listen," Garrus bit out. Kaidan snapped his mouth closed and looked at him expectantly. Garrus couldn't meet his gaze. "If I don't make it out of this and it turns out that Shepard's alive out there...Tell her I'm sorry and I'll be waiting for her. Saving her a seat. She'll understand."

They had seen, heard, and delivered so many last good-byes throughout this war. He never thought he'd be another of them, one that may never get delivered because she could well be waiting out there for him already.

Garrus lifted his head and nodded at Kaidan. "And try to make sure she doesn't do anything _too_ stupid."

That got a laugh out of Kaidan, though it was little more than a rough and dying chuckle. "I will," he said, shoulders hunching.

"That goes for the rest of the crew, too," Garrus said drolly, attempting to lighten the dark moment. "Someone has to look out for them and I'm not leaving that job to Jimmy Vega."

With a faint smile, Kaidan clapped Garrus on the shoulder. "Oh, I don't know… I think he could manage alright."

"Mmm, not sure about that but he could bullshit about it once it was done."

There was no escaping the grim undertones of their conversation, no matter how Kaidan laughed and Garrus smirked. In the end, they wouldn't be able to escape it in the coming days, weeks, however long it took for rescue to finally come. Garrus would remember it every time his stomach curled smaller with hunger, and he knew it.

Every time he thought about that last goodbye in London and the last goodbye he might well be sending off with Kaidan he would remember, but damned if he wasn't going to fight to the last.

* * *

The heavy patter of raindrops on the tarp of his makeshift nest woke Garrus from his fitful doze. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but his energy wasn't quite what it used to be. Down below him, the line of fallen trees was covered in a thick, misty carpet. He gave it a cursory scan with his visor then settled himself into a more uncomfortable position, the better to stay awake with.

In a few hours, the sun would come up and begin to burn the mist away. Over their time on the planet, they'd all become familiar enough with it's day and night cycles. He knew that sun-up wasn't far off, and that right now he needed to be alert.

He sighted along the scope of his sniper rifle, scanning for thermal emissions. It was useless to check for the Rachni's chemical signatures at this point. Their little war of attrition with them had left the place blanketed with it.

It was like the bastards could _smell_ the hope draining away.

Garrus glanced to the side at the tree trunk he was cradled close to. He'd managed to pin Shepard's nameplate against the bark, and beneath it he'd taken to carving out lines to mark how many days it had been since the _Argent_ had contacted them. Reaching down between him and one of the small crates he'd hauled up into the tree, Garrus fetched out the ceremonial talon. One sharp movement was all it took to mark in the coming day.

Three days past the one month limit he'd given them.

He and Tali were still alive and breathing, but… Garrus glanced down at the little food he had left: two and a half ration bars. That half would make up today's meal.

That's why he was out here, listening to rain pattering on the leaves and tarp overhead. He'd grown tired of the worried, sympathetic looks, tired of fighting with Tali over who needed to eat more and who could survive longer on less.

Besides, he was more use out here perched up a tree across from the _Normandy_ where he could warn them about—

Garrus reached up and tapped his visor to life. "Hostiles incoming," he said, already tracking the lead soldier in his crosshairs. "Looks like the usual small forward party to see how much we've softened up."

He squeezed the trigger, listened to the satisfying crack, and watched the Rachni soldier crumble to the muddy ground. Snagging a new thermal clip, he slotted it in place and took quick stock of how many he had left. It wasn't hard to see that he was running low. The entire crew was.

Another shot, another dead insect.

"They're in for a hell of a rude morning," James roared in his ear, throwing himself out from behind the haphazard fortifications they'd built at the base of the ship's loft. It was just made out of the empty crates from the shuttle bay and a number of logs they'd been able to roll down there, but it had served them well so far. James had even fashioned a number of wooden spikes to keep the Rachni further at bay.

Garrus watched through his scope as James vaulted over the forward bulwark and charged up the muddy hill to meet the Rachni head on. He snorted, adjusting his rifle slightly to give him cover. Another one went down from his shot as the one behind it was ripped to shreds by James' shotgun blast.

The rest of the Rachni found themselves yanked into the air as Kaidan and Liara arrived on scene. Two of them were hurled, screeching in their death throes, into a number of the wooden spikes. The last found itself crushed into the mud.

"Hell of an early wake-up call," Kaidan muttered over the comm. Garrus gave a dry, rough laugh. The Rachni had disposable soldiers and they were cunning enough to realize they were pushing the crew to the limits.

James' voice cut through the morass of his thoughts. "Wonder what the hell they want, anyway. I mean, other than revenge or whatever their buggy little minds think it is."

"I suspect," Liara murmured, "that Tali's theory is correct."

Garrus hummed, letting it transmit. "They want the ship, and we're in the way."

Far below, near the blockade, Liara turned to look up toward his perch. "Exactly." Even from here, he could see the way her brow was furrowing in worry for him. "Garrus, do you need anything?"

He lowered his rifle to rest across his lap and reached for the last of his water. He opened it up and took a gulp. "Mmm, an army of krogan, a bottle of the hard stuff, and a long shower," he drawled.

"I can't promise the first two," she called back, "but if you want we can hang you out in the rain."

"No thanks," he said, running his fingers along his rifle. He scooped it back up and took a line of sight. "If I wanted to do that I'd just stick my head out."

"Heads up, people!" Kaidan barked. "Here come more Rachni."

They were being pressured hard today, and by the time the sun had finally crept into the sky Garrus was beginning to feel his strength flagging. Down below him, each and every member of the crew looked just as run down. In the pale dawn light they looked worn thin as paper and ready to fall apart.

He couldn't help but wonder if this would be the _Normandy's_ last stand. Would rescue come only to discover them dead and the ship overrun with knock-off, rabid Rachni? Breathing out calmly he sighted on another soldier as it crawled over the top of the barricade and bore down on one of the crewmen. He thought her name was Westmoreland, one of the war room guards. She reared back from it as a tendril snaked out and pierced through her leg. Garrus heard her scream clear up in his perch and over the crack of his rifle as he took the shot.

Damn it, his reflexes were getting so slow. He watched as Private Campbell ran to her aid and began dragging Westmoreland back toward the ship. At least this time he'd managed to stop it. The last time… Well, Garrus didn't think he'd ever get rid of the image of a man being dragged off by his leg, clawing at the ground. They were as bad as the husks in a lot of ways.

One more name added to the memorial.

"Kaidan," he called, "to the west of you." This was what he could do, as a sniper. He could watch their backs, all of them, and keep them abreast of where trouble was. The Rachni weren't quite smart enough to come looking for _him,_ after all.

"Gotcha."

Garrus watched, satisfied, as Kaidan ripped through the Rachni with his biotics and pistol alike, then turned his attention to the others. "Tali, watch your back. Chatika's almost done for."

On it went, and every time they thought there was a pause another wave of tiny, horrid workers would slither out from between the rocks. It was a neverending insect swarm pushing at their every strength and weakness. The sun neared it's midday zenith when the Rachni eased off, the soldiers backing away from the barricade and scuttling back into the undergrowth

Steam rose from the churned up mud and peat, the stink of it hanging in the air. Between the Rachni corpses and the decayed leaf matter, it made Garrus want to gag. All the same, he snagged his half ration bar and forced himself to down it. He stretched out his cramped legs in between bites, feeling his joints catch with every movement.

Reaching out he snagged hold of one of the vines and kicked it over the edge of his makeshift nest. Garrus slung his rifle over his back, grabbed hold with both hands, and slid down to land on the forest floor beneath. He shouldered his way out of the undergrowth and headed for the rest of the crew.

"How many injuries?" he asked as he drew up next to where Kaidan rested, crouched against a crate. His head was tilted back, eyes closed and chapped lips parted. One eye cracked open and Kaidan offered him a wan smile.

"A handful of scratches and bumps," he said. "The worst was Westmoreland, but you saved her."

Garrus didn't say he should have been quicker. He'd have enough of that attitude to last himself a lifetime. "Will she be alright?"

"Doc says she'll make a full recovery."

Humming in his throat, Garrus glanced over their muddy surroundings. The rest of the team was there, scattered about and resting. Javik was crouched near Liara, both of them absorbed in their weapons. James and Steve were up near the _Normandy's_ airlock, and Tali had settled, crouched on one of the ship's wings looking stick thin and stubborn.

They were all alive still, and that was what mattered.

 _"Incoming message,"_ Joker said, breaking through his contemplation. He could see the way Tali tensed, the way Liara leapt up. Garrus could feel the thrum of sudden excitement replacing the waning, dying feeling of adrenaline in himself.

"Go ahead, Joker," Kaidan said, lifting his dirty fingers to his ear. All of them were stock still, waiting with baited breath.

 _"Hackett here."_ Garrus looked up slowly, meeting first Liara's gaze, then Tali's and James, Javik and Kaidan and Steve. Finally, finally… _"We're here to get you out of there,_ _ **Normandy**_ _. Prepare for immediate evac."_

 _"We can't just leave the ship!"_ Joker yelped, and Garrus laughed. He couldn't help it.

 _"Of course not,"_ Hackett said, as even voiced and calm as ever. _"But we need to get you and the rest of the crew up here for a proper check up and a good meal. My ground team will secure the_ _ **Normandy**_ _and we can start on initial repairs."_

Already, Garrus could hear the hoarse cheers going up around him, and wondered if Hackett could hear them too. He half wanted to cheer himself, but the _relief_ was so damned much that he just couldn't find the power to.

 _"Shepard?"_ Hackett said, and from how muffled it was, it was clear he was speaking to someone on his end. Garrus' heart leapt up into his throat, his breath going out of him. It _couldn't_ be…

 _"Admiral, the ground teams have already set out. ETA at the crash site is less than 15 minutes."_

It wasn't. The voice was tinged with the same sardonic amusement that Shepard had...but was much, much older sounding.

Garrus' heart dropped like a stone.

He wasn't given any time to dwell on it as all hell broke loose. With a scream like a thresher maw, the cloned Rachni Queen burst out of the muddy earth with her horde around her.

Ducking down behind one of the crates, Garrus heard Kaidan yelling into the comm, "I hope they can make it fast, sir! We have a situation on our hands."

* * *

 **A/N:** Happy Monday! So, since there was only three chapters left I decided to get them all posted this week. I'll be posting the final two on Thursday, since I feel like they're better read back to back. See you all then!


	6. Chapter 6

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **6**

* * *

With an irate scream the Queen lashed out and sent a crate flying to crash apart against a nearby tree trunk. Liara's yell of surprise was cut off as Javik shoved her down into the mud, their cover gone. The whine of his particle rifle charging up filled the air, undercutting the shrill tones of the Rachni. Bright, and white hot, the glow of the particle rifle's laser cut through the air, searing along the side of the Queen's body.

She reeled back, all of her anger and attention focused on the two of them. With another movement, she hurled a second crate right at Liara and Javik. Immediately, Liara was up mud-covered and glaring bloody murder. A barrier bloomed between them and the crate before she grabbed it with her biotics and hurled it back.

Garrus took the opportunity to yank his assault rifle out as the Queen staggered and opened fire, pelting her with armor piercing rounds. They ripped through her thick hide, bringing slick, noxious blood bubbling out of her wounds and pulling a loud, pained screech from her. She rounded on him, jaws parting in a hiss before she spat a viscous, green liquid his way. Darting out of the way, he dove behind a fallen tree trunk as the ratchet of more assault rifle fire cut through the air. Garrus glanced back, nodding at James and Steve as the report of their guns was joined by the quieter, quick sound of Tali's SMG. Like a storm, the crew's unrelenting fire cut into the surging mass of Rachni workers pelting toward them.

"There's no way we can hold this position for long!" Kaidan yelled, voice cracking slightly as it carried over the scream of Rachni and gunfire.

"Go for her right side!" Liara hollered back. "She has a large wound there. If we can exploit that—" She was cut off, forced to backpedal and run as another spatter of acidic mess landed where she'd been standing seconds ago.

"We don't need to hold out for long," Garrus called to them, "just until help arrives." Usually, it was _them_ that was the help arriving to assist beleaguered troops. How the tables had turned… Dropping to the ground, Garrus began crawling through the muck alongside the tree trunk. If he could get around to the Queen's right side he might just be able to get a good shot on that wound. "Cover me!"

It didn't matter that he was mostly starved and exhausted. Rescue was only a few minutes away, and there was _no way_ he was going to die now, not when they were so close. It felt like those first few minutes on Omega when he'd seen Shepard crossing that bridge. Hope, determination, and a thousand other things coursed through his veins, better than any stimulant or drug could hope to be.

At the end of the trunk, Garrus shoved himself to his feet and darted out of cover already swinging around to start firing along the Queen's side. The absolute _howl_ that came from her as his shots thudded into the mangled, fleshy hole in her carapace made his ears ring and his bones jangle.

That didn't stop the vicious grin that split his face though.

The Queen thrashed and writhed, long, pointed legs stomping down as she turned toward him. One of her long, tendrils darted out and Garrus barely managed to throw himself out of the way of the sharp end. It was still close enough that his shields flickered, sputtered, and went out. The rush of dizziness that flooded over him had little to do with that and everything to do with how damned _weak_ he was.

The spiked end of a massive leg came down inches from his left leg as he scrambled backwards until his back hit a gnarled root. This, he thought, was it then. He stared up at the Queen looming over him. That thick, viscous liquid seeped between her mandibles, dripping to hiss and sizzle on the muddy ground. He met her animal eyes and waited for the final strike. Then, suddenly, the air filled with the hum and throb of shuttle propulsion systems.

Distracted, the Queen turned away from him, lifting her head to stare at the blue and white Kodiaks flying in low over the trees. As the shuttles approached the doors on the sides slid open revealing Alliance soldiers, armed to the teeth. Their gunfire began cutting into the Rachni massed below them as ragged shouts rose from the _Normandy's_ crew.

Three of the shuttles peeled off, coming in lower a little further up the slope of the ridge and behind enemy lines. Barely three feet off the ground, the door of the forerunner came open and a human dropped out of it. From the other two more ground troops dropped in, and with them came _other_ Rachni. _These_ Rachni darted forward and began to tear into their bastardized kin shrilling rage and battle song as they ripped them to shreds with a quick and terrifying efficiency.

And there, in the midst of it all like a human shaped arsenal, gunfire blazing to clear her way, _she_ came. He could barely believe what he was seeing, but there was no doubting it. For a moment, Garrus wondered if he'd died out there on Omega and everything after had just been the last fevered dreams of his departing life.

Then she looked up, her eyes narrow and focused, and her irate gaze directed toward the cloned Queen. It was the exact same look she'd given that Reaper on Rannoch, and Garrus _knew_ , oh he knew he'd never have been able to dream up the absolute walking hurricane and devastation that was _Shepard_ ; a natural disaster given physical form.

Not in a million, trillion years.

She charged forward, shoving an assault rifle back into place on her back and pulling a heavy pistol off her hip. Everything seemed to slow, seemed to stop, as he took her in. The way she unloaded rounds into anything that got in her way, cutting a swath through the Rachni and toward the Queen.

Then she was there, at the base of the Queen's legs. She reached up, grabbed hold, and swung herself up onto the Queen's back. Shepard darted up along the Queen's spine, ducking under tendrils, and managing to stay on as it bucked and screeched. He saw the flicker of red-orange light as her Omni-tool came on, the blade arcing out near her wrist, saw the snarl that peeled her lips back and showed her teeth just before she plunged the blade into the Queen's head. It cut through like a hot knife through butter and the Queen screamed, long, loud and shrill. The sound pierced into his head and into his bones as she went down, contorting and flailing through her death throes until he had to cover his ears and clench his eyes closed.

After that, there was silence other than the scrambling patter of Rachni retreating followed by the heavy thump of boots not far from him. Garrus peeled his eyes open and looked slowly upward, taking in the familiar black gear with the red and white N7 stripe.

He couldn't force a single word out of his mouth, couldn't find anything to say. All he could do was stare at her, spattered with noxious Rachni blood and looking down at him like an avenging angel. If the people of Omega had known her back then, they'd never have christened _him_ Archangel.

Then her expression shifted and she gave him one of those _smiles_. "We really need to stop meeting like this," Shepard said, and he barked out a surprised laugh, unable to help himself.

"What? You back from the dead, and me near death?" he said, mouth running on autopilot as he drank in the sight of her. She looked so much the same, though there were new scars and other signs of still healing wounds.

Shepard's mobile mouth tilted into a smirk and she held her hand out to him. "It's a bit of a moodkiller."

Coughing out another laugh, Garrus reached out and grabbed her hand. "You know me, I like living on the edge."

She helped pull him to his feet and Garrus hovered uncertainly. The last time they'd been separated for this long she'd told him that the proper way to reunite was with a kiss, but…

Long before Garrus could pull himself together, Shepard took a step forward, grabbed hold of his armor and hauled him down. Her mouth pressed against his, warm and yielding and damned near overwhelming. With a low sound that was both completely destroyed and utterly convalescent he lurched closer to her until they were pressed tight. One of his hands found its way to cradle the back of her head while the other rested on the spine of her hardsuit.

He felt the feather-light touch of her hand against his scarred cheek and just cradled her even closer, his eyes screwed shut. When they parted, he kept her pressed close—forehead to forehead, and breathed out. Garrus hadn't really noticed how hard it had been to breathe these last few months, but with her there again it felt like he was learning how to all over again.

A low, bronchial, wounded sound left him. "Don't _ever_ do that again," he rasped, finally opening his eyes to get a good look at her. Shepard pulled back just a little, her mouth tilted in that little smile he knew so well. The one that said she was equal parts exasperated and fond.

"You know I can't do that," she said lightly.

"I know," he said, voice still sounding thick from top to bottom. "But it makes me feel better to say it." She laughed, and it sounded just as relieved and rejuvenated as he felt. Garrus brushed his thumb against the healing splay of burn scars along one side of her face, his own mouth tilting in a teasing smile. "And you're trying to steal my look now too."

She was so bright, so _damned_ radiant that it felt like he was looking straight into a sun. It didn't matter that she was covered in gore, and likely only half-way healed. It didn't matter that he was more than half-way to starvation and a shallow husk of himself. Nothing mattered right then other than the fact that his heart was still beating and, more miraculously still, hers was too.

Spirits bless them, but whatever they'd created between them had to be so _strong_.

"I can't let you get _all_ the Krogan women," she said, reaching up to tangle her too-many fingers with his too-few. Without protest he let her tug him back toward the grounded _Normandy_ and the swarm of Alliance soldiers, Rachni, and who knew what else she'd brought with her. His eyes never once left the back of her head as she made her way toward her bedraggled crew.

He didn't need to look to know they were all lighting up and coming back to life the same way he had.

"If I'd known," he drawled, content for the first time in months, "I'd have left you some."

And then, Liara and Kaidan and Tali were there, James and Steve hanging back with Javik who was the only one still frowning. The relief was palpable in the air. A storm cloud that had been washed away as the heart and soul of the _Normandy_ approached her ship once more. There was Joker, standing on the edge of the airlock, grinning like it hurt, and Shepard lifted her hand to wave at him.

"What did you do to my ship, Joker?!" she hollered, the relief in her voice at seeing them all alive was palpable.

Just like that, Garrus knew that everything was going to be alright.

Leaning down to murmur to her, Garrus said, "Is this the point where I tell you that your hamster escaped when the Rachni tossed us down the ridge, or…?"

Shepard's shoulders tensed, her posture stiffening and she glanced back at him then over to the cloned Queen's corpse. He had a feeling that if she hadn't already killed the thing, she'd be doing so now. Instead, all she said was, "So, Rachni, huh?"

Garrus hummed quietly, straightening back up as the crew approached. "Hmm, well you know us. We're good at getting into trouble even without you around to complicate things...It's just not usually as bad."

She laughed again, and Garrus released his hold on her hand, letting her step forward to greet her crew. Shepard greeted them each by name and rank, from Westmoreland leaning on Campbell to Adams, Donnelly, Daniels, Copeland and more. Even he, after all this time, didn't quite know each name and rank. They saluted her, wearing welcoming smiles as she moved through them, her gaze sweeping over each person. Shepard had always been nosy, Garrus knew, but nowhere was she nosier than with her own crew.

Chakwas was the first to pull her into a tight hug in greeting, though Kaidan, Liara, and Tali followed suit. Garrus just leaned back, watching her move between them to exchange nods with Javik and clap James on the shoulder, to accept the friendly greeting thrown at her by Steve.

Never once did he take his eyes off of her.

She came to a stop at last before Joker who'd finally hobbled his way down to them and rested her hand on his shoulder. Shepard turned and swept her gaze over them, her expression as firm as it had been when they'd set out to take down Saren all those years ago.

"Alright, time to get you all back into space where you belong."

* * *

Ahead of the shuttle, the Alliance dreadnought loomed above them, the shuttle bay doors already open to give them landing access. Several smaller frigates flanked the dreadnought, hovering silently in the vacuum.

Shepard stood near the front of the shuttle, holding onto the handrail above her, and Garrus' gaze drifted slowly to her back. The silence that filled the space was the silence of the exhausted who finally felt able to relax. Tali was dozing against Garrus' side, her helmeted head resting against the shoulder of his armor. Liara sat across from them, her fingers already busy with a glowing datapad. Joker at her side, looked out the shuttle and into space beyond, contemplative and quiet.

A shift drew his attention back to Shepard as she lifted her hand to her ear. "How's the rest of my crew doing?" she asked. Whatever she heard, satisfied her. She relaxed, rolling her neck and shoulders before turning to look back at them. She smiled briefly at him before looking distractedly away again.

There would be time, later, for them to speak seriously he knew.

"Our turn to dock," the pilot said from up front, and Garrus reached out to grip Tali and one of the handholds to keep them both steady.

As always, Shepard just swayed on her feet like they weren't being jostled by magnetic clamps. She was off and out of the shuttle as soon as the thrusters shut down, swept into the chaotic flow of people in the hangar. Garrus lost track of her almost immediately while he roused Tali.

Liara touched his elbow lightly as they stepped out into the waiting crowd of medical personnel surging around them. "You should go after her," she said quietly. They stood like the eye of the storm among the milling humans.

Garrus shook his head, and headed toward the human beckoning to him. "She'll come find me later," he said. After all, she always did. From the Citadel, to Omega, to Menae, and now here...

One thorough medical evaluation later, and Garrus had a bottle of nutritional supplements in hand. He dumped his gear in the locker they'd assigned him to and hauled on the civvies he hadn't worn since they'd crashed. The way they hung off him told him just how much weight he'd lost.

He made his way up through the ship to where he'd been told the mess hall was. It was far bigger than the _Normandy's_ though that was unsurprising. A dreadnought of this caliber would have a crew far, far larger than what the _Normandy_ ran with at optimal.

The doctor had told him he needed to go get a meal and a good night's sleep, doctors orders. Garrus, frankly, was planning to do just that. He could see the rest of the _Normandy's_ people gathered around tables. More than half of them looked ready to fall asleep on their trays.

One of the mess cooks beckoned to him after Garrus had loitered too long, engrossed in watching the swarm of soldiers around the room. He made his way over, stepping around the short lines still waiting to get their trays. From the Alliance personnel he caught their chatter about on-going matters in the galaxy that were so far beyond him and the little world he'd inhabited the last few months that it left him feeling bereft.

The man gave him a quick look over and turned to haul a tray down from a rack. "Garrus Vakarian?" he asked, and Garrus nodded. "Right. The doctors sent us specific orders on what and how much—we made sure to consult the Hierarchy before we came to get you."

"I'm surprised," he admitted at a drawl, watching as the man pulled out dextro-rations and began sizing up the portions.

Another smirk was flashed his way, followed by a shrug before the cook handed his tray over. "Commander Shepard made a whole lot of noise when she woke up and found out you lot were still missing."

Barking out a laugh, Garrus nodded his thanks at him and turned away. _That_ didn't surprise him at all. He scanned the room again, then headed toward the spot of blue and purple he managed to spot amongst the crowd. Tali and Liara sat at the end of one of the more empty tables, trays pushed aside and nearly scraped clean. Glyph sat in Liara's near empty glass, shrunk down small enough to fit without slipping into the liquid pooled at the bottom.

As he approached, Glyph placidly said, "Sorting your latest thirty messages into important and very important, Doctor."

"Already trying to catch up, Liara?" Garrus asked, sliding onto the bench across from her. Tali laughed softly on his left.

"She's been _trying_ to," she said, nodding her head at the datapad in Liara's hands, "but I don't think she ever will."

With a faint huff, Liara shook her head though her attention never left the datapad. "Feron's done well in my absence, but..." She sighed, pressing her fingertips to her temple. "I've missed _so_ much."

Deciding to leave her to it, Garrus glanced over at Tali and craned his head toward her tray. "The dextro rations any good?"

"After the last few months," Tali said, lifting her hands to motion expansively about them, "it could be nutrient paste and it would still taste _amazing_."

Laughing sharply, Garrus dug into his own meal, taking it slow so as to not upset his shrunken and hungry stomach. He was so absorbed in his food and listening to Liara and Glyph's back and forth that he didn't notice the approach of another until a tray clattered down right beside his. He jerked and looked up as Shepard settled onto the bench right beside him, so close that he could feel the warm press of her thigh against his.

"The Rachni Queen's sending troops to scour the planet and take out the rest of the rogues," she said, voice business-like and belying their closeness. He wondered, watching her with fond exasperation, if she'd _ever_ slow down. The times she had in the past were few and far between. She caught his gaze and tipped her head at him, but said nothing.

"I take it she isn't very happy with the situation?" Liara asked, after the silence drew on far too long. He hadn't looked away from Shepard yet, nor had she turned from him.

"No," Shepard said at last, looking away and setting to her meal. "She isn't, and neither am I."

They would speak later, he knew, when there was time. Just as always, they would push aside their personal relationship until they could _make_ that time for it, but the press of her thigh against his was a promise he knew all too well—just as the clasp of her hand in his on Menae had been a question and a promise.

After several minutes of quick, efficient eating, Shepard leaned forward to peer around him at Tali. If that meant her shoulder was pressed against him now too, well, Garrus wasn't going to complain. He let one hand slide under the table to rest on her knee.

"So, Tali," she said, "what do you plan to do now that things are over?"

" _Well,_ " Tali said, drawing out the word. "I will need to go back to Rannoch and make sure no one's taken my land, but after that...Who knows? It feels so strange to have nothing pressing to do."

The corners of Shepard's mouth tilted up into a smile that was almost as sad as it was anything else. "Yeah," she agreed, "it is."

"And what about you, Shepard?" Tali asked, her voice keen and sharp. Her gleaming eyes narrowed behind her faceplate.

"Well," Shepard echoed, and her head turned until she was looking askance at _him_. Garrus tilted his own head to regard her in return. "There's still a lot to catch up on." Her mouth trembled a moment as she tried to hide her smile. "But someone _did_ promise me a nice retirement deal and a few baby krogan."

Garrus laughed. He couldn't help it. His whole body shook with it, and he gave her knee an affectionate squeeze. "Ah, that's right. Somewhere sunny and tropical..." he said, voice flanging hard with humor.

"It was your idea."

"It was," he drawled.

Shepard sat back, her expression a subtle look of pleased triumph. Sometimes he couldn't quite fathom the paths her mind took, but he knew that whatever he'd said was _right_ and _good_ and _they were alright_. More than, if anything.

Then she looked up, heaved a sigh, and brought up her omni-tool. She tapped something out on it, and Garrus nearly started when his own issued an alert to a new message. "I need to make sure the team down at the _Normandy_ knows what they're allowed to do," Shepard said, standing. Immediately, Garrus missed the feel of her pressed against his side. "And find Joker so he can tell them about it for me."

She lingered a moment, looking at him, then nodded to each of them in turn before disappearing across the mess hall.

Garrus waited until she'd been gone for about a minute before accessing his omni-tool. The message was brief—a set of passcodes and three words: _My room. Later._

* * *

The dreadnought had a section of it's crew quarters put aside to give the ship's officers their own quarters. While he had no idea where Admiral Hackett's quarters were in comparison, Garrus had found out that Shepard, her mother, and the dreadnoughts XO all had rooms here.

He stepped into Shepard's room to find it empty of her presence. It was smaller than her cabin on the _Normandy,_ and not nearly as nice. There was a desk with a chair, a datapad on it, a personal terminal, and a few books tucked against the wall. The bed was a fairly standard bunk, and no attached bathroom and shower.

Garrus stepped over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, reaching for the datapad. He flicked it on. He thumbed away from the information on it immediately, not interested in prying into whatever she may have been working on. Instead, he got into his extranet account and looked over his own messages.

There were some from her scattered among those from his father and sister. He'd read them later. For now….he slowly typed up a message to send to his dad and Solana.

He tipped the datapad back onto the desk and shifted Shepard's pillows around, figuring he'd make himself comfortable while he waited for her. Between one blink and the next, he drifted off. The next thing he knew he felt warm lips pressed against his brow and the bed dipping at his side. Blinking his eyes open sleepily he saw Shepard watching him.

"Go back to sleep," she said, her hand rising to rest against his scars. Her thumb moved in an idle caress. "We can talk in when you wake up."

Garrus wanted to argue, but the exhaustion and the fact that he finally had a full stomach pulled him inexorably down. The last thing he remembered before falling back asleep was Shepard shifting to make herself comfortable beside him.

When he woke, feeling languid and drowsy still, he half expected her to be gone—to find himself alone again. She wasn't though. Shepard was there, half propped up. At some point in the night he'd slid down to use _her_ as a pillow, his face pressed against her shoulder and collarbone hard enough to leave marks on her skin and her arm slotted neatly between his neck and cowl. He could feel her even breathing in the rise and fall of her stomach where he'd draped one of his arms.

Lifting his head, Garrus pressed the blunt bridge of his nose against her neck. She shifted, adjusting the datapad in her one-handed grasp, and brought her other hand to rest it against the side of his head.

"Good morning," she said.

Garrus trailed his fingertips along the curve of her hip. It was mostly bare. She was wearing little more than a simple white tank top and her underwear. "The first one in a long while."

Shepard said nothing, but she dropped the datapad into her lap and grasped his hand in hers. They lay there, silent and unmoving. He soaked it in, even if the small bunk was a little too cramped for comfort. Time ticked on, and for once it felt like they could let it. He wasn't sure what to do with that feeling, if he was honest. It felt like he'd been racing for a deadline his entire life only to come up against a sudden wall.

He started to doze again, in spite of himself. Shepard finally broke the silence. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he drawled. "We had the best ship in the galaxy, it's not your fault you were running late."

She laughed, though she tried to hide it. He could feel the way it shook her body. "Uh- _huh_ ," she said, drawing out the word. Garrus could imagine the exact expression she wore without even looking. The same look she'd given that Volus on Illium when the thing had started going on about being a biotic-god.

" _Really_ ," he said. His voice flanged sharply as he yawned. Garrus pushed himself up and pressed his forehead to hers, his flat nose bumping against her odd, human one. "We all went in there expecting to die, not that I'm not damned glad you came back to me."

Shepard huffed out a sigh and closed her eyes. "I had important orders," she said, her lips twitching into a smile he had to go half cross-eyed to see. He wanted nothing more than to smile back at her and leave it there so they could move forward, but…

"What happened up there, Shepard?" he asked, wrapping his long fingers around her muscular bicep. Her eyes closed and she released a long breath.

"A whole lot of crazy," she said, and he laughed quietly.

"With you, when is it ever anything else?"

Shepard sent him one of those bland looks she was entirely too skilled at and brought her hand up to his face. She touched the soft hide just around his eye, brief and gentle as a feather. He looked at her, and she looked back, her expression slackening into sober seriousness. "The Catalyst," she said slowly, carefully, "asked me to sacrifice. No matter what I did, there was a price to pay."

Of course. Of course whatever she'd had to do would ask yet more of her. That seemed the way of things, and it made Garrus so damned _leery_ to ask anything of her. He didn't want to be one more person asking Shepard to give more of herself away.

Garrus slid back, pulling her against him and tucking his chin atop her head. She came, willing and pliable and so _damned_ trusting that it hurt. He cupped the back of her head in his palm. "What did it need?"

"Want," she said, a firm correction. "It was an AI. The one the Leviathan's kind created." He said nothing, just held her and waited. If the sharper than usual angles of his body bothered her, she didn't move or protest, just slung an arm over him and tucked herself in close. "It wanted either my humanity, my morals, or both." She snorted, slightly derisive. He recognized that sound, knew that if he could see her face she'd have that stubborn expression. The one with the furrowing brows and the creases at the corner of her eyes. The one that Joker liked to call her _angry face_. "I think it miscalculated. It didn't think I'd go through with destroying so much of what I'd worked for."

Humming quietly in his throat, Garrus rubbed his chin against the top of her head. "The Reapers always underestimated you."

"Damn right," she said, sounding vindictive. "I should have died up there, Garrus." He tensed, but he wasn't surprised. "But, hell, I think I lived just to spite them. I wasn't going to let them have the satisfaction of taking me down too."

Garrus laughed, long and harder than he expected. "That's my girl," he gasped out, gripping her in a tight hug. _That_ was the woman he'd fallen for, tripping unexpectedly into her life and _staying_ there.

This fierce and untameable woman who refused to lay down and die no matter what the galaxy threw at her. Whether by luck or some interminable force that moved the universe, they'd wound up here.

"I love you," he said, his throat as thick with the words as when she'd sent him off on the _Normandy_ in London.

Her reply came simple and easy, "I love you too."

Huffing out a breath, and entirely unable and unwilling to help himself, Garrus leaned in to press his mouth to hers and get her to give him another of her human kisses. She was more than willing, and for a few moments it was just them, this, and everything between them. He dragged a knuckle down her cheek as he pulled away.

Looking at her, he kept his expression serious. "I have to know though…" Shepard tilted her head, waiting for him to continue. "What did you tell the reporters?"

His question startled a laugh out of her and he grinned unabashedly, happy to chase away the lingering shadows of their conversation. "I told them I pushed a big damned button and fired a really big gun," she said with due seriousness. It was ruined by the look in her eyes. "And that they had better get out of my way because I had a ship to find, and there were more important things to do than ask me questions."

"At least you didn't punch anyone this time," he said dryly.

"That happened _once_ ," she said with a sigh.

Garrus tossed his head back in amusement. "Twice."

Shepard narrowed her eyes at him, and that was how he knew he'd won. "How do you know about the second time?"

Smirking at her and preening in his victory, he slyly said, "I didn't for certain until now."

* * *

It turned out that those of the _Normandy's_ crew weren't the only 'aliens' on board the dreadnought, outside of the odd Rachni of course. Garrus was more than a _little_ surprised when Shepard joined them at dinner again, followed by an all too familiar drell.

"You remember Kolyat, right?" she asked, sliding onto the bench beside him.

Thane's son hesitated a moment before moving to sit with them. The last time Garrus had seen him had been at Thane's memorial. Kolyat looked just as worn and weary as the rest of them, though his dark eyes were as unreadable and unwavering as ever his kind's were.

Kolyat nodded to them, and offered, "It's good to see you all."

He'd grown a lot, even since that memorial. Garrus remembered, all too clear, how hard Thane and fought to bring the kid around, and how angry Kolyat had been. It was good to see something work out well after everything that had happened.

Shepard jerked a thumb toward Kolyat and said, "He found me and hauled me out of the rubble up on the Citadel."

"I didn't—" Kolyat started, but Shepard continued to speak over him.

"And then managed to get a hold of Miranda."

"My father left contact information in his things—"

It was obvious that this conversation had happened before. Garrus leaned back and caught Kolyat's gaze around the back of Shepard's head. "Don't even bother," he drawled, smirking at him. "Once she gets going, it's best to let her."

Shepard sent him a reproachful look and Garrus returned it with one that was equally amused. He loved watching the way her eyes narrowed in belligerence when he was getting the better of her. Then she smirked, and Garrus felt that familiar sensation of having the rug yanked out from under him.

"If you're going to treat me like that," she said airily. They all knew _that_ tone of hers. "I guess none of you want news about the _Normandy_."

From across the table, Joker groaned. "Aw, come on, Commander! You can't let _Garrus_ ruin it for the rest of us."

Leaning in toward her, Garrus said, "I'll make it up to you sometime." He didn't bothered to hide the suggestive tone or look.

Shepard considered him, then said, "The Rachni will finish patching her well enough that we can get her off-planet by the end of the week."

The din the crew made, echoed around the entire mess hall bringing the conversations of the other Alliance personnel to a dead stop.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hell and High Water**

* * *

 **7**

* * *

The Alliance dreadnought didn't have observation decks like the _Normandy_ did, not really, but there were still windows. Garrus and the rest of the crew stood in the port lounge, gathered around the small viewports. Outside, hanging in the vacuum of space, was the _Normandy_. She was battered and still, tied to the dreadnought's mass effect field, but the repairs were almost finished.

It had taken nearly a month of the Alliance's best engineers to remove the remaining code left by the Reaper IFF and then to patch the gaping hole it left behind. He hadn't been terribly surprised that Hackett was able to help coordinate the Systems Alliance from orbit around a backwater planet. The man had managed to coordinate his fleets while constantly running from and attacking Reaper forces across a wide theatre of war, after all.

Garrus had used the month to catch up on information as well as build his strength back up. Now, they were a day away from being able to step back onto the _Normandy._ She still wasn't back to one-hundred percent, but she would make it back to friendly space for the real retrofits.

The door to the lounge rushed open, and Garrus glanced away from the window. Kaidan walked in and gave them all a nod before heading to where Shepard leaned against the small bar next to Tali. Garrus watched as the two stepped away, and Kaidan leaned in close to converse with her.

There weren't many people outside of the _Normandy's_ crew in this particular lounge. They'd nearly taken it over in their time aboard the dreadnought, though the normal personnel didn't seem to mind much.

Tali slid off of the stool she was perched on and wandered over to join him by the window. She glanced back at Kaidan and Shepard. "Seems serious," she said.

"If it's another galactic emergency," Garrus said dryly, "I'm going to tell Shepard I've developed a bad cough and can't go."

Laughing, Tali turned to look out at the _Normandy's_ elegant and curved form. "No you won't. Even if there is, you'll be right there beside her the whole way." She tipped her head, peeking at him slyly from behind the filmy covering of her helmet. "Just like always."

"Hmmm, I must be getting predictable in my old age."

Across the room, Shepard clapped Kaidan on the shoulder then made her way toward them. Garrus straightened as she approached, but a wave of Shepard's hand had him relaxing again. He could feel Tali's amused and knowing look burning into him.

"Kaidan's not coming back to the _Normandy_ ," Shepard said without prompting.

"Oh?" Garrus glanced back over at where Kaidan had moved on to speak with James.

She looked back over her shoulder as well. "Hackett's offered him his own vessel, and with most of Council space still in shambles, not to mention the Terminus systems…." Garrus nodded, understanding the logic well enough. Having two Spectres instead of two Spectres on one ship would be a boon.

"What's that human saying…?" he mused aloud to them. The one they used when an amount of people were _leaving_ … "They're dropping like flies?" James wouldn't be returning either, he knew. He was off to get his formal N7 training in.

"Liara's staying. She said that the _Normandy_ makes for a better secret Shadow Broker lair than the actual secret Shadow Broker lair," Shepard said, clasping her hands behind her back. She looked relaxed even as she stood at parade rest. He supposed that was something his Turian sensibilities found attractive about her. She wore _military_ very well. "Javik, too. And we added one." She glanced back, and Garrus followed her gaze. Kolyat sat on one of the couches, playing chess with Traynor. It didn't look like it was going well for him. "What about you, Tali?"

It made something warm unfurl in Garrus' chest that Shepard didn't even need to think about whether he was staying or going. As he'd once said...it would take a whole hell of a lot more than Reapers and a Galactic crisis to come between this cross-species liaison. Besides, he was tired of the fact that every time he was away from the _Normandy_ something catastrophic happened behind his back.

"What about me, Shepard?" Tali asked, shifting idly. It was good to see her back in such good spirits. Their time on the planet had worn them both thin until they were all rubbing each other raw.

"Are you planning to return to Rannoch immediately?"

Tali bounced lightly on her toes. "I'll have to soon," she said at length. "I have a duty to my people, but...I was hoping I could stay until all of the _Normandy's_ repairs are done." She tilted her head, giving them a _look_ through her helmet that was easily readable. Garrus chuckled.

Shepard smiled, just a bit sad. "Someone else would get it wrong?"

Garrus shifted to let his elbow bump against Shepard's and that was all that was needed for her smile to turn warm.

Softly, Tali hummed in agreement and the three of them turned their attention back to the ship—their home—out among the silent stars.

* * *

Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard met Garrus' eyes dead on as they stood in the shuttle bay, preparing to return to the _Normandy_. Though they hadn't had a chance to talk much, Garrus knew enough of the woman to know that _this_ was where Shepard had gotten her, well, everything from.

She had the same straight backed posture and proud bearing, the same expressive and yet stony features. Though Hannah Shepard didn't quite have the same pull and charisma as her daughter, there were definitely echoes of it tucked into her age touched face and steely gray hair. She looked him up and down, and not for the first time Garrus fought the urge to fidget under her scrutiny.

Then Hannah held her hand out, and Garrus reached to grasp it in return. It was a firm handshake. Whatever else, Shepard women apparently didn't lack for strength as they grew older. He wasn't surprised.

She said, "Look after my little girl, Vakarian."

"Yes, ma'am," he said without hesitation. There were no orders he'd rather take on than those.

"Mom," Shepard said, stepping up beside them.

Hannah gave her daughter a steady look, and Shepard matched it with the exact same stare. Finally, Hannah folded her hands behind her back and said, "If he upsets you, let me know. I'm sure I can pull a few strings with the Hierarchy to get him court-marshaled."

Garrus _did_ fidget then. It turned out that Shepard women also shared the same intimidating sense of humor. Luckily, Garrus had become something of an expert at dealing with Shepards. He threw his shoulders back and gave the Rear Admiral a sharp salute. "Don't worry, ma'am," he said in his best soldier-tones, "I'll guard her back while she makes all the important, button pushing decisions."

Hannah eyed him up and down once more, then nodded sharply. She shared that small smile that Shepard had too. "Good man," she said. Beside her, Shepard shook her head and got that _look_ about her that meant she was _tired of being picked on, guys, come on._

Garrus left the two to speak, and wandered over to where Kaidan and James stood, come to see them off. "Not having second thoughts are you?" he asked.

"Not a chance," Kaidan said easily, leaning one shoulder against the nearby shuttle. "Time to get out there, spread my wings."

James, on the other hand, laughed. "I might be back yet." He flicked a glance toward Shepard and shrugged. "Got to come back and make sure," and here he raised his voice to yell down the shuttle bay, "Esteban doesn't get lonely without me."

"Keep those dreams alive, Vega," Steve called back.

"What about you, Garrus?" Kaidan asked, leveling a steady look at him. "Any plans?"

"Oh, you know," he said, gesturing vaguely with one hand. Garrus turned halfway to look back at Shepard. "Going to see if I can talk Shepard out of any future suicide missions, calibrate the guns, see if any Cerberus troops still need shooting...the usual. Maybe I'll even find time to take a breather and call my family."

Stepping forward, Kaidan slapped Garrus on the shoulder. "Make sure you do that," he said. He looked up and met Garrus gaze for several long seconds. "Next time we both have shore leave, I think I owe you a drink."

Garrus gave a questioning hum and tipped his head. "Not that I won't say no to a free drink, but I'm not sure what I did to deserve it."

"Hell of a thing you did out there." His smile was easy-going and a Kaidan sort of mischievous. "Kept us all from giving up."

Scoffing, Garrus drolly said, "You did all the heavy lifting, I just made it look _good_." He glanced back over his shoulder where Shepard stood beside her mother. Both of them were looking toward him, standing in near identical parade rest. Even at this distance, Garrus could see the way Shepard quirked a brow at him. "Looks like it's time to ship out."

"Take care of yourself out there," James said, reaching to clasp Garrus' forearm. Garrus smirked at him.

"What have I told you, Jimmy? It's not me who has to look out." Tapping his visor as he turned to rejoin Shepard, he said, "It's _them_."

He came to a halt beside Shepard and tipped his head down to regard her. For several seconds, she looked up at him then nodded toward the waiting shuttle. Garrus preceded her, then offered a hand to pull her along with him.

Within seconds, the _Normandy_ loomed before them, battered but not beaten.

There were Rachni waiting for them in the ship's shuttlebay. Garrus stood and watched as they wandered silently past to stack crates and tighten straps. It reminded him a bit of the way the Keeper's had wandered around the Citadel, unbothered by the presence of other races, sentient or not. The difference was that one of them stopped long enough to hand off a datapad to Shepard before continuing on.

Garrus followed Shepard up the shuttle bay to the elevator. It bore them both upward to the Crew Deck where Garrus disembarked. He was surprised when Shepard stepped off as well, idly reading over the datapad.

She paused when he did, and looked up at him. He stared back. Shepard continued to stare at him as though waiting for understanding to hit him. Garrus just wanted to know what she was waiting _for_.

Finally, she said, "Go get your things, Vakarian."

"Uh?" Eloquent, smooth, and suave—he was going to sweep her off her feet all over again. The self-depreciating thought was quelled as fast as it had come under the fondly amused smirk she was giving him.

Just as plainly as when she'd first invited him into her bed, Shepard said, "After all we've been through do you _really_ want to stay in the Battery still?"

"Oh," he said, and then, " _Oh._ " His heart thudded and his throat clenched tight. Things had been progressing well between them, holding steady since she'd said ' _I love you, Garrus Vakarian'_ , but he still hadn't _thought…._ For all that he'd been living in the same quarters as her on the dreadnought, it hadn't occurred to him that things would be the same once they returned to the _Normandy_. He felt like an idiot, but at least he was an idiot that was grinning helplessly at his human girlfriend. "Right. I'll just...go do that."

He lingered a moment longer, then cleared his throat and strode off. Never once did her gaze leave him, burning into him like a gamma ray burst even after the doors to the Battery had closed behind him.

The first thing he noticed was that the hole from the tree trunk was more or less gone. He could make out where the repair was, it wasn't seamless, but it was good. It would be enough until they could get a proper retrofit for the ship.

Garrus hauled his small bag out from under the weapons bench where he kept it and set about gathering his scant few personal effects. What little he'd brought with him from Menae, and from Palaven before that, had mostly stayed packed away. The most scattered of his possessions were his various rifle mods and ammo packs, splayed across the surface of the weapons bench. He reached for the spare pack he'd left there, and frowned at the lightness of it.

Without the long line of Shepard's nameplate within, it was utterly empty. He stared down at it in his hands, and remembered. He'd left the nameplate on the planet, pinned to a tree in his makeshift sniper's nest.

He gripped the edge of the weapons bench, letting out a breath. The relief hit him full force, and he just let himself _feel_ it. If he hadn't been holding on to something, he was fairly certain he'd have staggered.

It was over. Everything was.

They'd defeated the Reapers, they'd survived being shipwrecked, and _Shepard was alive_. Alive, and waiting for him just beyond those doors.

Blindly, Garrus reached for the mods and upkeep tools strewn about, packing them away. He did a last, quick sweep of the Battery, then shouldered his bag and headed back out.

He _almost_ missed the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, but there was something about Shepard that always drew his attention. She stood in the Med-Bay, watching Chakwas flit around and check on the sparse stock they had. Garrus slowed his footsteps, adjusting his course, and headed for the Med-Bay doors. They opened for him as he approached. Garrus slouched against the doorframe, watching Shepard's retreating back as she headed for the AI Core.

It was so _familiar_ that it almost felt like the war hadn't happened yet. He might have been able to fall to that thought if his armor wasn't still a few sizes too big, and the wrong colors of his spare set. And, he thought, If the databanks in the Core weren't dead and quiet—if Edi's mobile platform weren't laying on the slab at the back of the room, silent and unmoving. Garrus let his bag slide down to rest on the floor beside the door, and strode quietly down the length of the Med-bay. Chakwas gave him a nod and a tired, quiet smile.

Shepard didn't quite _twitch_ as he stepped up behind her, but her head did turn enough that he knew she was aware of him. He stayed just inside the door, waiting, wondering. The last time he'd come to the AI Core was the last time he'd dragged Tali out of it, her frustration tearing her to pieces.

"I fought them, you know," Shepard said, voice quiet and thoughtful. "The Alliance was all ready to rip it all out and give us a proper VI again."

"You think we can still get her back." It wasn't a question. Garrus just _knew_ with Shepard. He could follow the tactical advances of her mind as easily off the battlefield as on. He knew it as well as he knew the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her ribcage, and the line of her waist swelling to her hip.

She stepped closer to Edi's still form and reached out a hand to rest over that unyielding, unmoving metal face. "I'm not ready to give up." Despite how quiet, how aggrieved the set of her shoulders was, Garrus knew _that_ tone well. He cracked a smile when Shepard looked up at him.

"So long as it doesn't involve another run through a Collector ship and the Omega-4 Relay," he said dryly, "then I'm right there with you."

Her smile was brilliant, if brief. "You'd be there even if it was."

Garrus dipped his head in acknowledgement, loving how _certain_ she was. She knew she didn't even have to ask for him to follow her into hell again, even after this. Instead, he asked, "You have a plan?"

Shepard's attention dropped from him and back to Edi, her hand moving to grasp the cold metal one on the slab. "Not a solid one," she said simply. Garrus stepped further into the quiet room, further toward Shepard as she contemplated. "The sacrifice I made…" She breathed out, her words trailing off into the ether. Once he was at her side, Garrus stood close enough for his arm to brush against hers. Shepard tipped her head back up and looked at him, expression hard and fragile all at once. "Just like Aratoht."

"Are you alright?" he asked, voice just as quiet. Shepard didn't lie about how she really was, even if she'd push it back just to keep going.

"I'm getting there," she said, squeezing Edi's unyielding hand. Her body tilted, leaning just a little bit closer to him. Her arm pressed against his. "When I let the Rachni Queen go I said I didn't want to be responsible for the genocide of an entire race. In the end, I was anyway."

Garrus hummed, remembering the smell of ozone and frying tech. He looked down at Edi, still as a corpse. And really, wasn't that what she was? "Kill a few thousand there, so a billion over there can survive," he echoed, and it just made him feel bone deep and tired.

"Maybe we can save the few thousand anyway," Shepard said, quiet resolve in her voice like the roll of thunder and the crack of gunfire. Garrus looped his fingers around her wrist as she lowered Edi's hand to rest on the slab again.

"What did you sacrifice?" he asked at last, probing the hurt to see if he could bleed out the pus and infection.

"The Geth," she said, eyes distant. "Edi. Parts of myself." Shepard looked up at him then, mouth set in an unhappy line. "To destroy them I had to destroy everything. The Mass Relays, too."

Garrus tipped his head, considering, then blew out a breath. "So," he said slowly, keeping his voice carefully blank, "does that mean we're back to using Omni-gel for everything?"

Whatever she'd expected him to say, it wasn't that. He could tell in the hitch of her breath as she bit back a laugh, and the way she tried to hide her smile with a hand. Her elbow hit the side of his arm lightly. "No," she said, weary amusement in her voice, "not quite _that_ bad yet, but maybe we should try slapping some on the relays."

"Can't hurt to try," he said with a shrug.

"No, it can't." Shepard tipped a look back toward Edi. "If nothing else, we organics built them once before. I'm sure we can do it again."

There was a familiar swell of pride in Garrus' chest that rose up when he heard her conviction, her warmth and empathy all coming together in those few words. This was why they followed Shepard wherever she might lead them. If anyone could see it done, it would be her. "I'll never understand how a woman like you ended up with a guy like me," he said, staring down at her. She looked up at him, amusement in the creases at the corners of her eyes.

"Dumb luck," she said, bumping her shoulder to his. "Now let's go get you settled."

"Oh, _really?_ " he drawled, leading the way back through the Med-bay. "I thought it was my, hmmm...dashing good looks, sense of style, and you know, the _scars_."

Shepard sent him a sly, sidelong look, her mouth tilting up at _just_ the edges. "Those helped."

Scooping up his bag as they went, Garrus trailed her back to the elevator. The _Normandy_ hummed around them, drive core running and all systems functioning. They'd be dropping into FTL speeds before too long, and after that…

Limping back into habitable space would take some time.

Shepard's cabin was as achingly familiar as ever, even after the wear and tear of their time on the planet. The fish were mostly gone, dead from lack of food. Mostly, it was just the eels and jellyfish that remained, having cannibalized their tankmates. Garrus had piled the paraphernalia from the shattered hamster cage on the shelf after he'd cleaned up the glass.

He must have hovered too long, because Shepard stepped back to him and tugged his bag from his loose-fingered grasp. She bore it away and dumped it on the sofa, and after a moment he followed her down the steps.

With a low sound, Shepard sat on the foot of her— _their_ bed. Looking at her fondly, Garrus crossed his arms and leaned against the case full of model ships.

"Feels good to be home," he said.

Shepard smiled at him, holding her hands out and without needing to think twice Garrus reached back. He stepped in close to her, her hands drifting up his arms to start undoing the seals on his armor. Gently, gently, he ran the back of one knuckle down the line of her shoulder.

"Yeah," she said, "it does."

* * *

Earth bloomed ahead of them out of the depths of space, great and blue-green and shadowed. While the surface didn't burn any longer there was an asteroid field of debris between them and the planet. Sol glimmered around Earth's edges, limning the planet in a coruscating golden halo.

Joker reached up, zooming in the video feed images of the debris field. Garrus could make out the name, numbers, and colors of every fleet in the galaxy. From Turian and Quarian, Asari, Geth, Volus, and Elcor, there were remains of all of them caught in Earth's gravity well. Above them all, like a secondary moon, the broken shards of the Citadel hovered.

The sheer destruction was overwhelming, but he could rest easy knowing how many of those shattered hulls were _Reapers_.

Behind him, from the depths of the CIC a wild cheer went up from the _Normandy's_ human crew.

 _"Welcome home,_ Normandy, _"_ Hackett said over the intercom.

Leaning forward, Garrus gripped the back of Joker's chair. "She still in the QEC?" he asked.

"Sure is," Joker muttered, fingers flying across the controls and adjusting for their rocky entry into Earth's atmosphere. "Guess the meeting ran longer than expected. Go get her, champ."

Garrus didn't need to be told twice. He was in motion before Joker finished talking, taking long strides across the CIC as the humans around him watched Earth draw nearer. He wondered if he'd feel that same wave of _relief_ and sheer _joy_ when he saw Palaven again.

He made his way through the security checkpoint, past the conference room, through the war room and came to a stop at the door of the QEC. Shepard stood at parade rest with her back to him. Before her, the holographic figures of the Council held sway. Tevos and Valern both bowed their heads and stepped back.

"We will see you when you arrive, Commander," Tevos said, just before she vanished from view. Only Sparatus remained, looking at Shepard with an expression that even Garrus couldn't quite parse.

"It was nice having a conversation with you that didn't disconnect suddenly," Sparatus said, his voice as dry as the desert. Garrus crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the side of the door.

"They had a saying back on Earth," Shepard said, just as dry. "About old dogs and learning new tricks."

Ungraciously, Sparatus snorted. "And which of us is the dog, Commander?"

Garrus couldn't _see_ the smirk spreading across Shepard's face, but he didn't have to to know it was there. "I should go."

 _"Uh-oh,"_ Joker said, the glee barely hidden under his words. _"Looks like our Quantum Entanglement is becoming_ entangled! _"_

It was a hard thing for Garrus to keep from laughing at the sheer _resignation_ Sparatus radiated. His head fell forward into the palm of his hand just before the communications cut. Shepard spun on her heels and headed for the door where Garrus fell into step with her.

"Do I want to know how many times you've disconnected on him?" he asked, because he really, obviously _did._

"Since I became a Spectre or between when I got out of the hospital and came to find you?" The smirk was still there, and damned if it wasn't the best thing Garrus had ever seen. "I lost track."

Laughing quietly, he followed her out into the CIC where the _Normandy's_ crew continued to bustle. He stopped at the base of the stairs as Shepard climbed up to her post, commanding over her crew and her ship the way she always had and always should. Garrus leaned against the shelf to her side, next to her personal terminal.

"So," he asked lazily, "where do you want to go after Earth?"

"Hell, I don't know," Shepard said. She turned her head to smile at him over her shoulder. The light of the galaxy map played off of her cheeks and shadowed her eyes. He'd never seen anything so utterly devastating before. It was _beautiful_. "We've got all the time in the universe now. We could go to Palaven, Thessia, Rannoch..."

They both knew that wasn't entirely true, duty would call them back the way it always did.

But here they were, they'd done it, they'd lived, and Shepard had come back to him against all odds. They were home, on the _Normandy_ with nothing but the reach of the stars and their own whims to guide them in this moment.

In the end, they had won.

Grinning, Garrus reached up and caught hold of her, pulled her down, and pressed his mouth against hers. She kissed him, unabashed, while the crewmen hooted and hollered. Shepard pulled back, just enough to rest her forehead against his. Her eyes never left him as she spoke, "Joker, take us in."

 _"Whatever you say, Commander."_

* * *

 _Neither hell nor high water can keep me from you._

* * *

 **A/N:** I wrote this for a sense of closure after beating the game. Consider it a...best case scenario of the end, heh. :)

I might well write more about this particular Garrus and Shepard and their little universe in the future. Until then...you can find me at my Tumblr, which is linked on my profile.

Thank you all for taking your time to read my story, and have a lovely day.


End file.
